Penn Avenue Lost Its Eastbound Traffic This Year. Unblurred Was Built for That Street.

On the evening of April 3, the Front Porch Band played on Gregory Wilson's porch on Penn Avenue. The music drew on early New Orleans jazz and string band traditions, and a crowd built on the sidewalk. Wilson half-joked that the band might be "to blame for the growth of the Unblurred art crawl." The band started at a violin repair shop and has played from his porch on First Fridays, spring through late fall, for five years.

Two blocks east, the street looked different from any earlier spring of the crawl. In March the City closed Penn Avenue's eastbound lane between Evaline Street and Graham Street for Phase II of its streetscape reconstruction. Through traffic heading east now goes down Main, Liberty, Baum and Negley.

The timing fits the crawl's history. Unblurred got its name because Penn Avenue was a street people drove through without stopping. With half the traffic detoured and two First Fridays left in 2026, the corridor is closer than it has been in years to the walking street the crawl was meant to create.

Why the Crawl Has That Name

Unblurred started in 1998. Jamie Kelly, who edits The Bulletin, the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation's community newspaper, says the 11-block stretch of Penn Avenue had roughly 60 vacant storefronts at the time. The crawl grew out of the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative, an effort to move artists into those empty storefronts. Kelly explained the name to Pittsburgh's Public Source this way:

"People would drive down Penn Avenue and just see a blur of storefronts. The goal was to get them to stop, get out and unblur what they were seeing."

According to BGC, the crawl is still free and monthly, covers the 4800 to 5500 blocks of Penn Avenue, and generally runs from 6 to 10 p.m. It stays free because participating organizations open their doors without selling tickets. Nearly 30 years in, the crawl still runs on the same model, with storefronts opening their doors to people walking by.

The Street Underneath the Crawl

Phase II is a full-depth rebuild run by the City's Department of Mobility and Infrastructure. The work covers the roadway, curbs, sidewalks, ADA ramps, traffic signals and streetlights. Gulisek Construction is the general contractor, and the City and the Federal Highway Administration are paying for it. This phase picks up where the earlier Mathilda-to-Evaline phase ended.

Sources give different finish dates. The City's project page says work started in early 2026 and should run through fall 2027, about two construction seasons. BGC's project page says Phase II could run into spring 2028 if needed. In March, the City said the eastbound closure would last 24 months. Either way, Unblurred will probably spend at least one more full season inside the work zone.

The City's November 2024 design summary describes what the finished street should include:

• New concrete sidewalks and curb bump-outs
• New traffic signals at Atlantic, Aiken and Graham
• A raised intersection at Pacific
• Landscaping, public art, seating and bus-shelter upgrades
• A POGOH bike-share station at South Pacific

Most of those changes affect people on foot, which matches what the crawl has always needed from the street. The plan adds bike racks and the POGOH station but does not list a new bike lane on Penn.

Walking It on a First Friday This Fall

The most recent block-by-block update is from July. In its June 26 update, BGC said businesses in the construction zone remained open and accessible. On July 10, BGC reported that the sidewalk between Atlantic and Pacific had reopened and that drainage and curb work was underway between Atlantic and Aiken. The City's staging plan uses temporary crosswalks while sidewalks are rebuilt instead of sending pedestrians on a detour. No later notice confirms which sidewalks will be open in November, so check BGC's site before you go.

If you take the bus, three Penn stops between Evaline and Graham are out of service during construction, and eastbound buses run on Winebiddle, Friendship and Roup. The gas lines and water service lines in the corridor are separate projects. Peoples Gas reported on Sept. 14 that sidewalk restoration for its Penn Avenue pipeline work was finished.

Here are the stops in 2026 coverage of the crawl, listed west to east:

1. Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, 5006 Penn Ave. "Out of Body" is organized by artist Tom Sarver and features Maritza Mosquera, Sarah Zeffiro and David Montano.
2. Two Frays Brewery, 5113 Penn Ave. Public Source describes music from its string-lit beer garden reaching the sidewalk, with '77 Club running a wood-fired pizza oven nearby. This spring the taproom showed graphic, graffiti-influenced work by Pittsburgh artist Robert Snyder.
3. Assemble. The Garfield nonprofit opens a new exhibition each First Friday. December and January share one combined show.
4. VaultArt Studio. Artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities build professional practices here. Manager Steph Neary calls the studio's First Friday approach a "full wraparound" model of making, exhibiting, selling and talking with the public.
5. Garfield Night Market, 113 N. Pacific Ave. BGC lists it as a monthly market held during Unblurred, with local vendors, artists, food trucks and musicians.
6. Pittsburgh Glass Center, 5472 Penn Ave. Public Source describes the walk there as 10 minutes past an active construction zone. The center's free exhibition "Forged in Flames: 25 Years of Art on Fire" runs through Jan. 18, 2027.

None of these sources is a full roster of participants for November or December. Each First Friday brings different openings.

What the Crawl Has Produced

El Colibrí shows how the crawl works over time. Jeimy Ibarra, her husband Pedro and her mother began with a folding table at First Fridays in 2022. In early June the family opened its first brick-and-mortar restaurant at 5331 Penn Ave. in Garfield. The menu includes huaraches, gorditas, sopes, esquites and taquitos, everything is gluten-free, and nearly every dish can be made vegan. The Post-Gazette reported that the family's pop-up stand first appeared at a Penn Avenue Unblurred. The restaurant opened during the first spring of the eastbound closure.

The same corridor also lost a long-running business this summer. Friendship Perk & Brew at 300 S. Pacific Ave. closed shortly before its ninth anniversary. Siblings and veterans JoAnn and Nick Redondo opened it in 2017 in a former 7-Eleven, and they thanked their customers, artists, writers and neighbors without giving a reason for the closure. The South Pacific corner is where the design plan puts a new POGOH station.

The district's businesses are also trying new ways to keep people walking. At the August crawl, they tested an Unblurred Passport. Visitors picked up a passport at a participating "Pitt Stop," and 12 stamps earned rewards at designated businesses. BGC called August a test run and has not said whether the passport will return.

The Two Dates Left in 2026

Kelly told Public Source that the crawl "started as something grassroots… artists opening their doors, showing work, inviting people in. That hasn't changed." The street around it has changed, and it will keep changing through at least fall 2027. With eastbound traffic gone, Penn Avenue on a First Friday is now mostly a walk between open doors, from Irma Freeman at 5006 to the Glass Center at 5472.

Phase II will affect anyone thinking about buying or selling near the Penn Avenue corridor before the rebuild wraps up in fall 2027 or spring 2028. Black Key Partners tracks timelines like this block by block and can explain how they bear on your plans. Request a Concierge Consultation, and we'll go through the reconstruction schedule as it applies to your street.