Father Pitt

Birmingham was the oldest and most populous of the four boroughs that were taken into Pittsburgh as the South Side in 1871. The eastern border was today’s South 17th Street, where East Birmingham began, and the border is still marked by Carson Street suddenly becoming wider and the rest of the parallel streets refusing to line up.

The East Carson Street Historic District covers Carson Street in both the Birmingham and East Birmingham parts of the South Side, which together make up one of the country’s best-preserved Victorian commercial streetscapes. Here are some buildings on three blocks of the narrow part of Carson Street in old Birmingham.

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