Hill District residents remember the way that things used to be

Histories rich with joy and sadness

SEE ALSO: Blacks help drive steel revolution in… Histories rich with joy and sadness

SEE ALSO: Blacks help drive steel revolution in Pittsburgh

Rundown homes, vacant once-owned businesses, almost 12,000 Pittsburghers, about 93 percent of whom are black.

It is the Hill District – and it hasn’t always been this way.

“It was beautiful,” Walter Hamm, 73, said three times.

Hamm, of Hamm’s Barbershop located on Centre Avenue, has been running his shop in the Hill since 1958 and said that, once upon a time, it was a thriving community.

“I was on top of the world, but the world disappeared from me,” Hamm said as he continued shaving a customer’s head.

“Ah, the good ‘ol days,” the man to his left chimed in.

Hamm’s isn’t the only place where people remember how the Hill used to be.

Alvin Thompson, 51, a janitor at the Macedonia Baptist Church, said that at one point in history, people didn’t have to go far to find something to do.

“It was a great place to live,” said Thompson, who was born and raised in the Hill. “It’s not the same as it used to be.”

He said the Hill District was a close-knit, family-oriented, diverse community with block parties, social events, movie theaters and restaurants – hardly what it is now.

Abe Wooten, 86, a retired dairy company worker and another janitor at the church, recalled that people used to say it was the “best place to stop between New York and Chicago.”

Back then, neighborhood stores and black-owned businesses lined Wylie and Bedford avenues and Logan Street. The Hill was home to blossoming celebrities, such as Lena Horne and George Benson, who played at nightlife hotspots, including Crawford Grill, Hurricane Lounge, Musicians Club and other bars and clubs.

“There was a lotta love in the Hill District,” Hamm said. “Whites and blacks came through the Hill. It wasn’t prejudice back then. We respected each other.”

But the urban renewal project of the 1950s changed life in the Hill District for years to come.

Wooten saw the development of Downtown, as workers tore down homes and businesses of the Lower Hill to build the Mellon Arena, formerly known as the Civic Arena.

“They would have torn down more, but people complained,” Wooten said.

Angered Hill District residents marched up and down the intersection of Centre Avenue and Crawford Street, later named Freedom Corner, to protest the massive destruction.

But it wasn’t enough.

The urban renewal project displaced more than 8,000 citizens, who were forced to move elsewhere.

The once-lively Lower Hill was mostly destroyed. Causing more damage, the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. volatilized the area.

The 1980s crack epidemic demolished what was left.

The Hill became a predominately black community when white families moved to suburban areas like Mt. Lebanon and Fox Chapel.

“Blacks were not accepted in those areas,” said Robert Lavell, chief executive officer of the Dwelling House of Savings and Loans and president of Lavell Real Estate Inc.

Lavell also earned his master’s in real estate and insurance from Pitt in 1954.

“Many white people had restrictive covenants in their deeds,” he added. Such covenants were later made illegal.

But at that time, their homes could not be transferred to anyone who wasn’t white.

Hamm said that businesses fell apart in the late ’70s because of the growing use of drugs in the community.

When asked if drugs were still a major problem in the Hill District, Hamm replied, “No, the drug times are gone.”

But Detective John Mook says they aren’t.

Mook – of Zone 2, which includes the Hill District – guessed that 90 percent of the cases he deals with in the Hill District are drug-related.

“I’ve worked all over the city, and [the Hill District’s] probably the highest drug-trafficking area in the city of Pittsburgh,” Mook said.

Despite the decrease in drug violations from 284 in 2003 to 228 in 2005, according to a 2000-2005 crime report, the general problem is far from improving.

Crime Prevention Officer Janine Davis said these statistics do not truly reflect reality.

She said that the use of drugs is just the “umbrella” causing other crimes, including prostitution, homicide, burglaries and shoplifting.

The people who are caught shoplifting, Davis said, “are not the best-dressed people in the world. They’re doing it to support a habit. They need bags and bags of the stuff a day.”

Mook said that drugs are still a problem.

“I could go out at 3 a.m. and score drugs, no problem,” Mook said of the main drug-trafficking streets in the Hill District.

He added that even with new homes and communities built to attract families, the drug users will just shift over a block or two. In a few years, the drugs will be back where they started, and the vicious cycle will continue.

“I’m here today to tell you that, yeah, it might look different,” Mook said. “They might put in new housing, maybe a new store, this and that, but there’s plenty of crime up here. I could make an arrest every day.”

Lavell said that the drug problem is because of families who aren’t teaching their children the importance of receiving an education and remaining drug-free.

“Drugs are only taken by human beings. People don’t have to take drugs,” Lavell said. “We can blame something on the use of drugs, but the basic fault is no one is teaching and training and disciplining anybody as they grow up.”

Mook agreed.

“If you’re born in a neighborhood like this, and you don’t know who your father is, and your mother is a drug addict and a hooker so she can make money, what do you think you’re going to grow up and be?” Mook said, but he added that there are good people in the Hill District.

Lavell said that he’s trying to be an example for young black children so that they “Keep that needle out of their arm, keep that bottle out of their mouth.”

They need to learn, Lavell said, to “have a good job, get married and not just have babies.”

He added that stable families in the Hill District are harder to find these days than they were in the ’30s and ’40s.

Hamm said the Hill District is missing an essential aspect of a vibrant neighborhood – people.

“We need people here in the Hill District,” he said. “We need a community that consists of people who live here and understand what a neighborhood is about.”

Hamm might get his wish.

The Hill District is showing signs of redevelopment and promise for the future, said Dewayne Cheatham, director of early learning and child development at the Hill House Association.

Hill House is a nonprofit organization that provides social services for one Pittsburgh’s low-income, black communities, the Hill District, according to its Web site.

“They’re developing the structure that will bring the people back into the Hill District,” she said. “They’re building new homes, they’re tearing down some of the project developments and making room for single-family homes.”

New businesses are beginning to find homes in the Hill District, too, such as Family Dollar and Subway.

Councilwoman Tonya Payne, of District 6, was unavailable to comment on the Hill District’s improvements, but Dewayne added that the Hill House is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University to open a new grocery store in the Hill District.

She said that the Hill District is trying to become what it once was, an up-and-booming community back in the ’50s.

“They’re trying,” Hamm said of the city’s effort to revitalize the Hill. “You can see the improvements.”

But Hamm said the renewal of the Hill District is out of the hands of its residents and into the hands of the government, or what he called “the system.”

“We’re just here,” Hamm said. “We’re only the Indians. They are the chiefs. They call all the shots.”