The area was known to American frontiersmen and colonists as Ayer's Hill in honor of a fortification built by the English commander Ayers in the mid-1700s. Sometime near the Revolutionary War and throughout the 19th century the area was referred to as Boyd's Hill in the expanding frontier and then industrial city. The name is said to have been given to the neighborhood after a newly arrived businessman swayed by Hugh Brackenridge, left his downtown office and hanged himself on the hill. Uptown was first developed by James Tustin, an eccentric English émigré who built an estate in the area in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. His home featured an English taste in architecture and a fruit orchard, and was acknowledged at the time to have been "the most beautiful place in Pittsburgh," according to a 1915 article in the Pittsburgh Gazette–Times. Tustin named his estate "Soho" after his previous residence in Britain, and the name came to be generally applied to the neighborhood. The neighborhood was originally part of Pitt Township, but was annexed in 1846. The addition was precipitated by the city's efforts at regrowth following a cataclysmic fire in 1845, which destroyed and 1,000 buildings. A 1922 guidebook, A History of Pittsburgh and Environs, noted that the area's houses were "old and not attractive, and are largely populated by foreign mill workers and their families", and a 1977 guide remarked that it was once "a pleasant residential area for many wealthy Pittsburghers" but "as industry moved in, the wealthy moved out". The neighborhood was adversely affected by Pittsburgh's urban renewal campaign in the 1960s, and in the estimation of some, "has never been reassembled". Construction projects in the area include expansion by Duquesne University, and development surrounding the newly completed arena for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Neighborhood character
Fifth Avenue is home to law offices such as nationally recognized Schiffman Firm, LLC and a few restaurants and bars, but vacant storefronts and small street parking lots for Downtown commuters are prevalent as well. Brick rowhouses are common in the neighborhood. There are significant efforts in the community to reassert a sense of identity, and residents range from Downtown workers and long-time residents to university students and health professionals.
