Today, the Pittsburgh City Council heard testimony related to the nomination of the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House as a City of Pittsburgh historic site. My written testimony (below) supplemented the 2021 nomination report I prepared and my oral testimony delivered during the hearing.
Tito House Historic Site Nomination
Bill No. 2022-0190
Pittsburgh City County Hearing
April 20, 2022
Testimony of Dr. David Rotenstein
For the record, my name is David Rotenstein and I am writing as the author of the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House historic site nomination report.
I am a professional historian and architectural historian with 38 years of experience in the historic preservation field. Briefly, I have a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and I have taught at Penn, Carnegie Mellon University, Goucher College’s graduate historic preservation program, and Montgomery College (Maryland). I also worked as an instructor for the National Preservation Institute training attorneys, private sector telecommunications firm staff, and cultural resource management professionals in compliance procedures for the National Historic Preservation Act and National Environmental Policy Act. Previously, I was certified as a Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA). I have served on the board of directors for the Society for Industrial Archeology and was the chairman of the Montgomery County, Maryland, historic preservation commission. My professional qualifications exceed the Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualifications Standards in History, Architectural History, and Archeology. Federal, state, and local agencies, judicial, and quasi-judicial bodies have qualified me as an expert in historic preservation and I have written widely on historic preservation policy, architectural history, social history, and industrial history.
In June 2021, I began conducting historical walking tours in Uptown’s Fifth Avenue corridor. The tours are part of my approach as a public historian to do collaborative research and they complement my project documenting the social history of numbers gambling in Pittsburgh. In September 2021, Doors Open Pittsburgh incorporated my walking tours into the nonprofit’s citywide programs.
One of the first stops along the Fifth Avenue tour is 1817 Fifth Avenue. I selected the property because of its ties to Joe Tito, a consequential figure in Pittsburgh’s twentieth century underworld. Historians have long recognized Tito’s key roles in Prohibition-era activities and for his partnership and friendship with William A. “Gus” Greenlee, one of Pittsburgh’s most beloved and successful twentieth century Black entrepreneurs. The pair worked together in the city’s informal underworld economies and as successful sports entrepreneurs as co-owners of the Pittsburgh Crawfords Negro Leagues baseball team and Greenlee Field, the nation’s first Black-owned and controlled professional sports stadium. During that first tour last June, an Uptown resident pointed out that a brick building behind the house, facing Colwell Street, had been a beer distributorship. Later research identified the house and Colwell Street building as the birthplace of Rolling Rock beer.
The two parcels you are considering as a City of Pittsburgh historic site is one of the most historically significant sites that I have documented in my nearly four-decade career. Multiple threads of Pittsburgh and national history converge at the house and former beer distributorship at 1818 Colwell Street. The report that I prepared last year on behalf of Dr. Brittany McDonald and Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh irrefutably demonstrates that the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House and former beer distributorship meet at least seven of the ten Criteria for Designation as a City of Pittsburgh historic site. An archaeological survey would likely add an eighth criterion to this impressive list of qualifying factors. As a professional historian who has worked on all sides of historic preservation issues as a professor/teacher, historic preservation commission chairman, federal and state government agency employee, and consultant, I don’t offer such recommendations lightly. My work in historic preservation isn’t a hobby and it isn’t done to fulfill some intellectual objective. When I do historic preservation work, it is guided by laws and implementing regulations. My reports and recommendations are not academic exercises; they are legally defensible work products.
As the City’s review process and hearing cycle began for this historic site nomination, I shared copies of my report with internationally renowned scholars in Pittsburgh history, Black history, baseball history, historic preservation, and Italian-American history and culture. Several of these scholars, including some on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh and professionals with the Senator John Heinz History Center, wrote letters endorsing my research and recommending that the City of Pittsburgh designate the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House as a City of Pittsburgh historic site. These letters were included in materials forwarded to the City Council ahead of this hearing.
I hope you will fully review my November 2021 nomination report and the letters from Tito family members, scholars, and others who wrote to support the nomination. There’s a lot of information to digest and some of it may seem contradictory. The Planning Commission unanimously voted to recommend designation and the Historic Review Commission did not. I hope that you will review the administrative record, including the video recordings of each hearing. In my professional opinion, the Planning Commission made a legally defensible decision firmly based in City law (§1101.4). The HRC record is less sound. The HRC vote failed to actually address the Criteria for Designation and instead focused on individual members’ feelings and opinions, especially with regard to the Titos’ Prohibition-era activities in bootlegging and gambling. Despite the strong comments offered by HRC members at the November 2021 viability meeting and in the February 2022 hearing, Pittsburgh’s historic preservation law does not have a morals exception among the Criteria for Designation. The HRC voted to deny recommending designation not because the property failed to meet the designation criteria, but because the members did not like the historically significant activities in which the former owners engaged. The nomination report makes a legally defensible case for designation under seven criteria; a property only needs to meet one to pass the bar for designation. The law is clear and so are my report and the letters from internationally renowned experts who reviewed my work and found it sound.
Please review the complete record and the findings of the Planning Commission and vote to designate the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House as a City of Pittsburgh historic site. It will be a move that will be beneficial to the Uptown neighborhood, to the city, and to generations of residents and visitors.
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