Project:Rules of the game

Pittsburgh Streets is a long-term project. These are the rules and guidelines I aim to follow. They are written here mostly to help me stay on track and maintain consistency.

Scope

The scope of this project includes all named streets, avenues, ways, boulevards, lanes, roads, and so forth, that are wholly or partially within the current city limits of Pittsburgh, that exist today or have existed in the past or were seriously proposed (for example, "paper streets" that only ever existed on maps).

Public steps are in scope if they have a street name.

All streets entirely outside the current city limits of Pittsburgh are out of scope. If I do find an interesting piece of information about such a street, I may try to include it as an aside for a related Pittsburgh street (for instance, the former Llawnipsa Street in Aspinwall is mentioned in Aidyl Avenue).

Highways are in scope, but bridges and tunnels are not. For information about bridges and tunnels in Allegheny County, see Bruce S. Cridlebaugh, Bridges and Tunnels of Allegheny County and Pittsburgh, PA, 1999–2018 (http://pghbridges.com/).

So-called "trap streets" are not in scope, if I can identify them as such. For example, the ninth edition of the Rand McNally Pittsburgh Street Guide shows "Querulous Street" at the western end of Kedron Street in Homewood West; no such street has ever existed.

Article titles and disambiguation

Many Pittsburgh streets have had several different names over time, and similarly there are many street names (such as Washington Street) that have been applied to several different streets. This presents a challenge for organizing information about these streets: What title should the article about a particular street have?

The general principle is that the article about a street should use the most recent name of the street, with a disambiguator in parentheses if necessary. Former names of streets should redirect to the most recent name.

With very few exceptions (e.g., B Street), the current set of street names in Pittsburgh does not have duplicates. So nearly all streets that exist today will be found under their current names, with no disambiguator.

For a street that no longer exists, the article title should be the final name of the street. If that name has never been applied to any other street, no disambiguator is needed (e.g., Fancourt Street).

When a name has been applied to several different streets, disambiguation is necessary. Disambiguation of a name is done according to the following rules:

• If a current street has this name (e.g., Brighton Place or Chestnut Street), then the current street takes precedence over all others.
  • The title with no disambiguator is used for the article on the current street (like Brighton Place or Chestnut Street).
  • If the name has been applied to just one other street (e.g., Brighton Place), then the article with no disambiguator (like Brighton Place) should have a hatnote at the top pointing to the other street.
  • If the name has been applied to two or more other streets (e.g., Chestnut Street), then a disambiguation page should be created with "disambiguation" as the disambiguator, like Chestnut Street (disambiguation), and the article with no disambiguator (like Chestnut Street) should have a hatnote at the top pointing to this disambiguation page.
• If no current street has this name, and only one former street had this name as its final name (e.g., Townsend Street), then the title with no disambiguator is used for that former street (like Townsend Street).
• Otherwise, the title with no disambiguator is used for the disambiguation page (e.g., Washington Street).
• The corresponding article title or redirect for each other street should have an appropriate disambiguator. For example, Brighton Place (Brightridge Street), Chestnut Street (42nd Street), Chestnut Street (Chatham Square), Washington Street (11th Street), Washington Street (Wyoming Street).

When it is necessary to use a disambiguator for an article title or redirect, it should be the first of the following options that is sufficient to disambiguate the name from other uses:

• The current name of the street, or, for a street that no longer exists, the final name, e.g., Pennsylvania Avenue (Fifth Avenue) or Fourth Street (Fancourt Street). This option does not work, of course, if this is the name being disambiguated.
• The current neighborhood in which the street is or was, e.g., B Street (California-Kirkbride). This option works less well if the street spans or spanned two or more neighborhoods, though it can be done, e.g., Spring Way (Strip District and Lawrenceville).
• A year range when the street name was in use, e.g., Eighth Street (1784–1862).

Some streets are officially divided into two streets with directional prefixes (e.g., North Negley Avenue and South Negley Avenue). For the purposes of this project, these are not considered to be distinct streets, and both are covered in the same article (Negley Avenue). But not all directional prefixes should be ignored. For example, these are completely different streets:

• The numbered streets through Downtown, the Strip District, and Lawrenceville (such as 21st Street) and the numbered streets in the South Side (such as South 21st Street).
• Lincoln Avenue and North Lincoln Avenue.
• Liberty Avenue, West Liberty Avenue, and East Liberty Boulevard.

In some cases, the renaming of streets has changed what was once a single street into two or more streets, and it does not seem appropriate to redirect the former name to any single modern name. In such a case, a separate article is created for the former street, e.g., Main Street (Lincoln Place).

Neighborhoods

Pittsburgh Streets uses the official names and boundaries of Pittsburgh's 90 neighborhoods, as shown in the online Pittsburgh Neighborhoods map from the Department of City Planning. These names and boundaries do not always match colloquial usage. For example, Carnegie Mellon University is often said to be in Oakland, but the majority of its campus is officially in Squirrel Hill North.

Neighborhood boundaries can change: for example, in 2024, block group 3 of census tract 305, bounded by Bedford Avenue, Crawford Street, Fifth Avenue, and Crosstown Boulevard, was transferred from the Central Business District to Crawford-Roberts. When this happens, neighborhood descriptions in Pittsburgh Streets will be updated accordingly.

Citing sources

As far as possible, every statement should be supported by a reference to one or more sources. The sources should be specified in sufficient detail and precision that anyone can find the source and verify the statement.