Allegheny West Historic District

Located on Pittsburgh's North Side beside Allegheny Commons, this residential district grew up after the middle of the nineteenth century, when streets were laid out and filled with houses of many types, including detached villas, row houses and large double houses. Ridge Avenue was the most fashionable street, favored by iron and steel fortunes of the late nineteenth century. Its surviving houses include the Byers-Lyons House, the William Penn Snyder House and the John Moorhead Jr. House, and Memorial Hall, once a dormitory of the Western Theological Seminary. Calvary Methodist Church, built in 1892-93, is among the largest institutional buildings in the district. Emmanuel Episcopal Church, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in 1885-86, stands at North and Allegheny Avenues. The area also has a long history before settlement, since an Indian trail crossed it that was later used by early Western Pennsylvania figures. The district is valued for its housing and churches from the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.