The Lower Hill before the Arena: : A rambunctious, crowded, loud place with 'everything you needed'

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/17/2011.

Excerpt:  In 1957, the year demolitions began to clear land for the Civic Arena, the Lower Hill had been designated a slum. But what the bulldozers destroyed was the last of the city's great immigrant melting pots.

Crowded, unsanitary, multilingual, multicultural, multiracial and unsavory here and there, its old architecture and vitality were the wrong kind. The Lower Hill had come up against a postwar society thinking about space.

The $21 million "Cinderella Project" proposed to revitalize 100 acres with what the newspaper called "a long-needed municipal auditorium."

No longer needed after 50 years, the since-renamed Mellon Arena itself is a step from the wrecking ball. The Historic Review and Planning Commissions have voted not to recommend historic status to preserve it. City council, which has yet to vote, is the last hope of preservationists.

Preservation was not an issue in the 1950s, nor were the sacrifices people were anticipating within the arrowhead-shaped land bounded by Bedford Avenue, Crawford Street, Centre Avenue and Washington Place.