Deutschtown Music Festival attracted over 20,000 visitors to the Northside this year
Back-To-School Guide Pg. 15 Local Marketplace Pg. 26 Real Estate Transactions Pg. 28 Education on the Northside Pg. 30
August 2017 Est. 1985 Your Community Newspapper
The Northside Chronicle
Page 4
Volume 33 Issue 8 - FREE -
Photo by Bridget Fertal
Inside Highmark SportsWorks at the Carnegie Science Center where kids can be seen trying out the new Ropes Challenge course.
Bound by history: Perry Hilltop, Fineview By Victoria Stevans Fineview and Perry Hilltop, two neighborhoods with distinct, rich histories are coming together to make their communities stronger, more collaborative and beneficial to everyone. According to John Canning, president of the Allegheny City Society, in 1787 the Northside was first surveyed by the Pennsylvania Assembly. Within the same year the hills beyond the Allegheny and Ohio rivers’ flat floodplains (now Perry Hilltop, Fineview, and their surrounding neighborhoods) were
divided into multi-acre farms. These farms were mostly populated by rich families in “country-like estates” on the hills above city property. Other families in the area settled along main thoroughfares, like Federal Street and Perrysville Avenue. Federal Street which was known outside of the city as Franklin Road or the Venango Trail, eventually bled into Perrysville Avenue. The settlement of Perrysville was named in honor of U.S. Naval commander, Oliver Hazzard Perry. Federal Street and Perrysville Avenue proved to be a major road-
way, connecting both the northern and southern portions of Allegheny County with Pittsburgh city limits. Presently, it serves as the dividing line between Perry Hilltop and Fineview. In 1828, the Order of St. Clare created a young women’s school and convent in the hills. “Although the nuns left the area before the formation of Allegheny City in 1840,” Canning said. “The term ‘Nunnery Hill’ was often used to identify the neighborhood that is presently called Fineview.” “The prominent landowning families on both sides of Perrysville
Road began to have their acreage surveyed and subdivided into small plots for residential development,” Canning said. Canning acknowledged that majority of these subdivisions began occurring after the Civil War. From 1875 to 1900, the McClintock, Darlington, McNaugther, and Pusey families in Perry Hilltop along with the Andrews, Bells, Hay, and Henderson families in Fineview, turned their large farms into apartment buildings and See Unity Corner, Page 8