A community education and engagement event to highlight the historical significance of the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House, a property nominated as a City of Pittsburgh Historic Site located in the Uptown neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

Contact:

Sabreena Miller, Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh, smiller@uptownpartners.org 

Dr. David Rotenstein, david.rotenstein@earthlink.net or (412) 328-3830

Date: Saturday, April 2, 2022

Time: 1 PM to 3 PM

Start: Fifth Ave & Gist Street Parklet

Cost: Free

Fifty years of Pittsburgh history played out in Joe Tito’s home at 1817 Fifth Avenue and his family’s beer distributorship at 1818 Colwell Street. During Prohibition, Joe Tito, a first-generation Italian-American, became one of Pittsburgh’s best-known bootleggers. Tito was close friends and a business associate of one of the Hill District’s most successful and beloved Black entertainment entrepreneurs, Gus Greenlee. The pair used their success in bootlegging and gambling to enter legitimate businesses. Greenlee opened the iconic Crawford Grill and became a leader in Negro Leagues baseball. Tito and his brothers bought the Latrobe Brewing Company and introduced Rolling Rock beer. Together, Tito and Greenlee led the Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team in the early 1930s. They also built and operated Greenlee Field, the nation’s first Black-owned professional sports stadium.

These stories converge in Uptown and will be the focus of a pop-up history museum curated by historian Dr. David Rotenstein and sponsored by Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh. The outdoor pop-up museum will highlight Uptown neighborhood history and the roles that Joe Tito and his family played there. The event will feature interpretive panels, artifacts, and public talks.

Dr. David Rotenstein is a public historian documenting the social history of numbers gambling in Pittsburgh. He researched and wrote the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House site nomination for historic designation in the City of Pittsburgh.

Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh is a non-profit organization powered by residents, institutions, business owners, and other concerned stakeholders working to improve community quality of life in Pittsburgh’s Uptown neighborhood and to collaboratively implement a vision and create pathways for Uptown’s revitalization.

Read the full historic nomination report here.