Bernie Brittner and Dave Hoza are proof that you can take the guys out of the old neighborhood, but you can't take the old neighborhood out of the guys.

The two cousins have spent much of the past three years collecting memorabilia and memories related to the East Street Expressway project that cut through Pittsburgh's North Side, displacing thousands.

Their goal is to produce a feature-length documentary on the people and places that disappeared along the route of what is now Interstate 279.

At the center of their effort is a 25-foot-long map that stretches along one wall in the basement garage of Mr. Brittner's home in Marshall.

Mr. Brittner, 62, a retired sheet metal worker, assembled the map from state Department of Transportation drawings in an effort to locate every home, institution and business along the length of East Street.

He grew up in Pittsburgh's Spring Garden neighborhood, and Mr. Hoza grew up in Troy Hill. They remember walking to East Street to visit some of the small stores and eateries.

"They were nothing fancy, but they had a lot of family-style restaurants," said Mr. Hoza, 60, a retired social studies teacher who lives in New Sewickley.

Covering an area from North Avenue on Pittsburgh's North Side to the city's border with Ross, the map is peppered with more than a dozen red pushpins. They mark the properties where the cousins have made arrangements to interview the people who used to live there about life in that neighborhood.

They shouldn't lack for stories. About 6,000 people were displaced as PennDOT acquired 1,300 homes, schools, churches and businesses in the ambitious effort to provide a fast and convenient connection between Pittsburgh and its northern suburbs, the cousins said.

Planning for I-279 began in the 1950s. Linking Downtown to I-79 in Franklin Park, the highway was completed in 1989, becoming one of the major factors in the rapid residential and commercial growth in northern Allegheny and southern Butler counties.

While many of those who were uprooted are growing old and some have died, the cousins have located some who are eager to share their memories of the neighborhood.

"We've been finding a mixed reaction from former residents," Mr. Hoza said.

"A lot were sorry about the loss of their old neighborhood. Others remember it as becoming an eyesore, and they were glad for the big bucks they were offered for their properties."

The plans for the highway changed multiple times. Mr. Brittner has a copy of a 1957 cover story from the Sunday Roto section of The Pittsburgh Press. At that point, the interstate project called for a divided highway that would have hugged the hillsides and left many East Street homes and businesses untouched in the valley below.

While state and city officials debated the project, people moved and properties deteriorated. "There were years of uncertainty and failure to make decisions," Mr. Brittner said. "Some people stopped taking care of their buildings."

Landmarks and historic structures were demolished to make way for the highway. Mr. Brittner pointed to a photograph showing a group of men gathered outside the Avery Memorial Zion AME Church. Founded as the Avery Institute and named in honor of abolitionist Charles Avery, it served Pittsburgh's African-American community as a school or house of worship for more than a century.

While the building was demolished in the 1970s, the impressive memorial to the Rev. Charles Avery, who died in 1858, still stands in Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood.

One building that came close to meeting the wrecking ball but was spared is St. Boniface Church, which still stands today alongside the interstate. PennDOT bought the church in 1971 and the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh announced its closing, but a group of parishioners, led by their pastor, went to Washington, D.C., and got the church placed on a federal registry of historic places. St. Boniface became a symbol of the community's opposition to the expressway.

Some of the materials the cousins have collected came from Thelma Waldorf, a neighborhood activist. Mrs. Waldorf still lives in Pittsburgh and has declined to be interviewed on camera, but she provided several pages of handwritten reminiscences of her old neighborhood.

She was active along with the late Dr. Martin Krauss in the Highway Emergency and Relocation Team, or HEART, a neighborhood group that represented many East Street residents in their dealings with PennDOT and city officials. The group's symbol was a red heart, pierced from above by a knife labeled "I-79."

Efforts to find interview subjects have involved cold-calling people who share the same last names as former residents and business owners. "I've made a lot of calls to people named Manos, but nobody knows anything about the Manos Bakery that used to be in the neighborhood," Mr. Brittner said.

The cousins have been working with Cranberry cameraman Adam Green on the project, which they hope to complete in the next 18 months. They plan to shoot their interviews with digital cameras and intercut shots of the giant map and vintage photographs with their interviews with former residents.

The finished documentary will be transferred onto videotapes, which they hope to sell.

Their effort has been inspired in part by the popular, award-winning local history programs that Rick Sebak has produced for WQED.

"We don't have our own political agenda," Mr. Hoza said of the project.

"We want to let people tell their own stories," Mr. Brittner said.

Former residents of the East Street neighborhood who want to take part in on-camera interviews or share photographs, home movies or memories can call Bernie Brittner at 724-934-7712 or e-mail him at brittner@zoominternet.net.