Insanity Reigns Supreme in Friendship

The Pittsburgh neighborhood of Friendship is known as a family-friendly community, replete with large houses, spacious yards, and signature porches--all right in the middle of the city. The neighborhood has been transformed in the past twenty years into a tasteful, (mostly) affordable community known for its historic housing stock.

It comes as a shock, then, to see the gracious old homes being deprived of their signature porches by owners that are, well, insane. The photo below depicts the last remaining fragment of a huge, wrap-around porch that was just taken off over the weekend.

It's worth recounting Friendship's post-war history to put this into context. Once known as a "streetcar suburb" for wealthy managers, lawyers, and doctors, as well as more modest homeowners from the 1880s through the 1940s, the neighborhood that fell on hard times in the 1950s through the 1970s.

The large houses were abandoned by their original owners and transformed by absentee landlords into rental units. Many of the grand homes' interiors were cut up to accommodate as many people as possible while generating maximum return, while decorative details were largely stripped away, such as 100-year-old wood paneling, marble fireplaces, and stained glass windows.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Friendship enjoyed a renaissance by young homeowners who had a taste for historic houses. Those homes that weren't too badly damaged were reclaimed and restored. By the late 1990s, Friendship had turned around. Home sales were among the fastest in the city, a place where one could get a lot of house for relatively little.

By the time the movie "Wonder Boys," starring Michael Douglas and featuring Friendship, was released in 2000, the neighborhood was on its way back. Shortly thereafter, Whole Foods opened up nearby, Penn Avenue was successfully rebranded the Penn Avenue Arts Corridor, Trader Joe's came, the Eastside development was completed, the Children's Home opened, and Children's Hospital relocated to the western end of Penn Avenue.

One of the most defining trademarks about Friendship is its porches. Homeowners who value irreplaceable architecture and fine craftsmanship invested in their porches to create a distinctive neighborhood that is attractive to upwardly mobile residents. It's a true American story, a rags-to-riches tale that defines who we are as a nation.

It's embarrassing then, that right at Friendship's gateway, two of the most distinctive homes have been deprived of their porches. One house, where Roup and Fairmount come together, was just de-porched this past weekend.

This poor house joins another one a block away, that lost its porch several years ago.

When will the insanity end? And people have the audacity to say that historic preservation is "restrictive." Yet, the community has no recourse to this type of destruction without preservation protection.

These types of actions de-value others' homes who have spent a lot of time and money maintaining their porches. The insanity spreads and chips away at a neighborhood's value, one home at a time. Welcome to Friendship: Land of Lost Porches.

It is our hope that one day, insane absentee landlords will wake up to the importance of saving those things that cannot be replaced. Or, perhaps they should be institutionalized for our own safety. Porches are what makes neighborhoods like Friendship so important, and what makes us all proud to be (sane) Americans.