You Can’t Build That Here — August Wilson House
July 17, 2024
Our thirteenth entry in the You Can’t Build That Here series takes us to the childhood home of renowned Pittsburgh playwright August Wilson in the Hill District .
For our thirteenth entry in our “You Can’t Build That Here!” series, we hop on the 71A/B and then take the 81/21 into the Hill District.
It’s harder to get into the Hill District now than it used to be. For the first half of the 20th century, Pittsburgh Railways’ Streetcar Line 85 would have taken us right where we needed to go. Or, if we were feeling a bit more adventurous, we could have taken the Penn Incline up from the Strip District. If we were coming from downtown, we could have walked through the neighborhood of the lower Hill District, now Crawford Roberts. But the Penn Incline was closed in 1953. The Lower Hill was demolished to make way for the Civic Arena, displacing 8,000 residents and 400 businesses between 1955 and 1960. And the 85 was closed in 1966. Without population density, we cannot support high quality mass transit.
Each entry in this series highlights a currently existing building that would be illegal to build under the existing zoning code. The purpose is to highlight how flawed our zoning code is.
Today, we are looking at 1727 Bedford Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 - the August Wilson House - the childhood home of famed Pittsburgh playwright August Wilson (1945-2005). August Wilson is renowned for his “Pittsburgh Cycle” of plays, which celebrate the experience of the Black community in the Hill District throughout the 20th century. They were heavily informed by his own experience growing up as a Black child in the Hill District. “Fences” (1985) and “The Piano Lesson” (1987), two of his plays from the “Pittsburgh Cycle” both won Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, and “Fences” was adapted into a film starring in 2016.
