Bloomfield, known as Pittsburgh's Little Italy, has kept its Italian-American character through a century of urban change, and you are walking through it now. Italian immigrants began settling in Bloomfield in the early twentieth century, many of them from the Abruzzo region of central Italy, working in Pittsburgh's mills and establishing the businesses and institutions that gave the neighborhood its identity. Liberty Avenue, the main commercial street, is lined with Italian restaurants, delicatessens, and bakeries that have served the community for generations.
Sacred Heart Church is at the center of neighborhood life. Bloomfield differs from many Italian-American urban neighborhoods in that it did not experience the dramatic depopulation that emptied similar communities elsewhere. The neighborhood lost population after the steel collapse but retained its character.
Today Bloomfield is adjacent to the rapidly gentrifying Lawrenceville and faces its own pressures from rising rents and new development. The strip of Liberty Avenue between Lawrenceville and Oakland has become one of Pittsburgh's most contested real estate corridors. The old Italian community and the new Pittsburgh are negotiating the same sidewalks.
A fourth-generation Italian deli sits next to a craft cocktail bar. Pittsburgh is always negotiating between what it was and what it is becoming.