As with East Liberty, the Mellons sold or rented this land and used the proceeds to finance Pittsburgh's coal, steel, and gas industries.

Before long, Larimer residents had built and were running concrete foundries and commercial bakeries along Lincoln Avenue towards Two-Mile Run (some of which still exist today), and a successful commercial district at the intersection of Larimer Avenue and Meadow Street, near the community's spiritual home of Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church (1898).

Renowned entrepreneur and judge Thomas Mellon argued against it, saying that there was too much water to fit into an underground sewer line.

“This run in cases of heavy rains is turned into a raging torrent which an eight-and-a-half foot sewer cannot carry off,” Mellon said in an 1887 article in the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette.

[3] In June 2014, Larimer successfully applied for and received a coveted $30 million grant to re-build the neighborhood, which was provided through the US Department of Housing and Development.