East Allegheny builds on its past with revitalized, ‘remarkable’ Chestnut Street

Erik Kath, an architect by profession, had lobbied Pittsburgh officials to respect the history of Chestnut Street in East Allegheny as plans moved forward to rehabilitate the street.

Kath, a member of the board at Community Alliance of Spring Garden — East Deutschtown, and many of his neighbors especially wanted to keep the brick surface on the four short blocks from Phineas Street to just past Tripoli Street.

They would have liked to have kept the old streetcar tracks, too, for the character they brought to the neighborhood despite the tendency for potholes to develop around them that could make driving treacherous. But that was too expensive, and contractors couldn’t guarantee the street would hold its shape with the embedded rails.

So residents settled for a $1.6 million project that rebuilt the street from its base with a red surface, concrete sidewalks and intersections with bright wide crosswalks and ADA ramps. Kath is so satisfied that he is rehabilitating a building he bought along Chestnut and will move a couple of blocks to live there when he is done.

“It’s amazing,” Kath said during a news conference at a vacant lot at Chestnut and Tripoli that the neighborhood hopes to convert to a parklet as its next project. “We are so happy you were able to keep the bricks.”

Kath said Chestnut has been the main thoroughfare into East Allegheny since the 1830s and was the commercial center of the area until the 1960s, when zoning was changed to single-family housing. The street improvements and future park could return it to a central gathering place in the neighborhood, he said.

Michael Panzitta, a city engineer who oversaw the project for the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, said he initially approached the project with “terror” because he knew how important it was to residents.

“I’ve lived on the North Side for 10 years, and Chestnut has always been terrible. This is what happens when we invest in our neighborhoods,” he said, gesturing to the new surface and sidewalks.

City Councilman Bobby Wilson lives nearby and represents the district. He credited Mayor Ed Gainey for listening to the neighborhood’s pleas to “remember our history,” which included being home to the original Prantl’s bakery.

“We knew [eliminating the bricks] was a no-no,” Wilson said, remembering what he called “hard conversations” about how to complete the project. “In the end, I think it’s a great project.”

For his part, Gainey said the neighborhood support for the project was key to gaining his support.

“It takes neighborhood people to build a community for all,” he said. “We do a lot of roads, but this turned out remarkable.”

And the future of the streetcar rails isn’t lost forever. About 100 linear feet of rail has been saved for an art project for the neighborhood. Industrial Art Workshop of Hazelwood is waiting for the neighborhood to decide what that artwork should look like.