Uptown / Bluff / Soho / Boyd's Hill

Since moving to Pittsburgh a few months ago, I have come to learn that Pittsburgh's character as a city of neighborhoods runs very, very deep. It's one of the many things that makes this such a great city - worthy of its status as one of the finest places to live in the country. How many neighborhoods does this city actually have? Depends on who you ask - surely eighty, perhaps ninety. In honor of getting a fancy new camera on coming to the city, I've decided to acquaint myself with all of these neighborhoods by means of a photography project. And I've started at home - in the neighborhood that at some point has had at least four different names. The city calls it "Bluff," but most everyone seems to call it "Uptown." At least everyone in Uptown does, that is. When I tell long term Pittsburghers where I live, they think it's Downtown or the Hill District or, more sadly, they don't think it's anything at all. With the opening of the Fifth Avenue High School lofts where we live and other signs of development closer to the Consol Center, it is possible that this neighborhood, with its decades of morphing identities, is on its way to another chapter. I hope these photos give you a sense of the place, its great public art and its potential. I know that the name Soho conveys a hipsterness that isn't present in the neighborhood and is probably not even desirable, but perhaps there's something in those other Sohos, a clear sense of self and identity, that would be.  Larger images can be found here.