Located in Pittsburgh’s East End along Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield is known as Pittburgh’s Little Italy.  The annual Little Italy Days festival invites folks to celebrate the neighborhood’s traditional heritage by inviting people to play in its commercial heart along Liberty Avenue. Neighborhood places take on new identities.  In 2006, for example, Cedarville Street became an amphitheatre with a stage and seating, and parallel parking spaces and sidewalks became midways.

Originally home to a group of German immigrants, Italian immigrants asserted a larger presence in the 20th century. The easiest place to see this influence is in the neighborhood’s food. The district has two Italian grocerias and a collection of restaurants including Alexander’s Pasta Express, Lombardozzi’s, Tessaro’s, Mariani’s Restaurant (The Pleasure Bar), Mezzanotte Cafe, Del’s, and Grasso Roberto, to name a few. Parking meters are painted in the colors of the Italian flag, and on a fair weather day anywhere between Main Street and Baum Boulevard, you might hear bits of Italian being spoken over the lively bustle of the streets and sidewalks.

Bloomfield is a complete, 18-hour neighborhood. Commercial architecture ranges in style from traditional storefronts with ornate trim and brackets to the more austere former Plaza Theatre building (which now contains Starbucks and W.G. Grinders). Shopping in this neighborhood encompasses everything from daily groceries to automobiles. The neighborhood is also home to the Western Pennsylvania Hospital (West Penn), one of the region’s major health care centers.

Bloomfield’s small parks offer greenery to visitors.  A park under the Bloomfield Bridge is known for kickball tournaments, Friendship Park (just behind the hospital) is popular with walkers, joggers, and pets, and a playground on Cypress Street attracts small children.

Business owners interested in moving to the neighborhood are often impressed with its proximity to downtown and access to transit. Liberty Avenue is, at most, a 15-minute drive or bus ride from downtown. And by the end of 2006, Bloomfield will become much more bike-friendly because, sections of Liberty Avenue will be getting bike lanes and better signage, encouraging bicyclists and drivers to share the road (see Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from 8/28/06).

The neighborhood also has great offerings in the arts. Paul’s Compact Discs is a treasure trove of recorded music spanning blues, jazz, classical, new and classic indie rock, and critically-acclaimed pop music. A few blocks away are a duo of galleries: moxie DaDA and Box Heart. Bloomfield also shares a border with the growing arts district managed by Penn Avenue Arts Initiative.

A neighborhood fixture at the intersection of the Bloomfield Bridge and Liberty Avenue is the eponymous Bloomfield Bridge Tavern, the self-proclaimed sole Polish restaurant in Little Italy. Thursdays are a popular night at the BBT, where $1 bottle specials and mild nights draw patrons out to the patio. Although this neighborhood is known best as Pittsburgh’s Little Italy, no matter what ethnicity, neighborhood pride is an embracing and universal force in Bloomfield.

Links

Bloomfield Business Association

Bloomfield at Pittsburgh Neighborhood Tours

Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation

Welcome Mural at Main & Liberty

Liberty Avenue

The West Penn Hospital

Tessaro's Restaurant

Mariani's Restaurant & Pleasure Bar