After the long dark age of “urban renewal,” which always meant either warehousing the poor in ugly towers or replacing city neighborhoods with suburban ranch houses, Crawford Square, begun in 1993, was the first attempt to build a new urban neighborhood in Pittsburgh. It was not as adventurous as it might have been: it was purely residential, with no stores or churches or any of the other things that make a neighborhood in the city. But its success showed that people wanted attractive housing in an urban setting, and paved the way for other developments to come. This is Crawford Street, with St. Benedict the Moor (one of the few remnants of the old neighborhood) at the end of the block.
