Allegheny West developed as a neighborhood of the wealthy and the substantial middle class between 1850 and 1910. North, Beech, Lincoln, and Western Avenues are streets of Italianate and Romanesque houses set close together, though commerce has taken over sections of North and Western Avenues. The birthplace of Gertrude Stein and the house where Mary Roberts Rinehart began writing mysteries are on Beech Avenue; industrialists and prominent men of commerce such as Joshua Rhodes, William Thaw, Joseph Horne, and Henry Buhl were Allegheny West residents. Many of the stylish and elegant homes were designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow. Ridge Avenue, the neighborhood's southern boundary, was a street of mansions. The annexation of Allegheny by Pittsburgh in 1907, and the growing ease of commuting by automobile and the development of suburbs, initiated the decline of Ridge Avenue. The Byers-Lyon house (Alden & Harlow, 1898), Chalfant house (c. 1900), and B. F. Jones, Jr. house (Rutan & Russell, 1908) survive as part of the Community College of Allegheny County. The last of the great houses of Ridge Avenue, the W. P. Snyder house (George S. Orth, 1911), remains as offices. The District is distinguished by the presence of H. H. Richardson's Emmanuel Episcopal Church (1886), and Calvary United Methodist Church (Vrydaugh & Shepherd / T.B. Wolfe, 1895), PITTSBURGH HISTORY & LANDMARKS FOUNDATION Submitted by: Sam Santangelo