The East Liberty Presbyterian Church tower (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Somewhere around 2005 or 2006 I was sitting in the Shadow Lounge a coffee shop, bar, event space that was located at the corner of Highland Avenue and Baum Boulevard. The space was most recently the Livermore and is currently undergoing an update and will be reopened by the folks who own Independent Brewing and Hidden Harbor.
I can’t remember why I was there that evening, I think it was a week night. But I remember that Chris Ivey walked in and was eager to show off some of his most recent footage he had shot in East Liberty. I have a clear picture of sitting there in the blue room, a room painted blue with a large projector on the wall, watching this footage and feeling stunned about how much I didn’t know about this neighborhood. I had spent most of my life less than a mile away from East Liberty, but my Pittsburgh experience could not have been more different. I think of this evening every time I hear about a screening of East of Liberty. Looking back this is probably one of the points that where I realized that thereis an importance of storytelling and story sharing.
East Liberty is a neighborhood that has changed many times in its history. Chris Ivey has been documenting the most recent changes for his documentary film East of Liberty.
Facebook Live with Pittsburgh Filmmaker Chris Ivey
PublicSource, an investigative news website that writes stories about Pittsburgh and Western PA (I have contributed to PublicSource and continue to work with them on researching stories), will be interviewing Chris Ivey on Facebook Live on Wednesday. If you are interested in East Liberty, neighborhoods, urban planning and how people in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods are impacted by development, this should be an interesting discussion.
RSVP for the Facebook live here. If you have a question you want to ask Ivey, leave a comment during the interview or send it to jeff@publicsource.org ahead of time.
Recent PublicSource stories about East Liberty
- “What’s left when the gentrifiers come marching in” – January 8, 2018
- “One of the last residents of Penn Plaza will continue her family’s legacy in East Liberty for now” – March 29, 2017
- “How housing policy over the last century has made Pittsburgh what it is today” – May 17, 2017
