Tag Archives: Pittsburgh (Pa.)

Pittsburgh’s Historic Review Commission misses the history

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Earlier this week I attended a Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission hearing to cover the proposed designation of a landmark gay bar, Donny’s Place, as a city historic site. One of the regulatory agenda items ahead of the designation case involved a property owner’s proposal to rework the facade of a building in the Mexican War Streets Historic District.

Proposed facade alterations for the former Caruso beer distributorship building shown to the Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission February 5, 2025.

Located on the corner of Taylor Avenue and Wolfrum Way, the one-story commercial building has a long history. In the 1919, Angelo Lascher opened an auto repair shop there. Its facade with multiple garage doors reflected the business done inside. Lascher sold the property in 1966 to Sam Caruso, who owned a nearby beer distributor.

Caruso’s beer distributorship photographed in 2021 before it closed. Photo by David Rotenstein.
1925 real estate atlas showing the location of Angelo Lascher’s garage.
Angelo Lascher’s auto repair business regularly appeared in auto parts manufacturers’ ads published in Pittsburgh newspapers. This ad was published July 17, 1930, in the Pittsburgh Press.
Sam Caruso placed this help wanted ad in the Pittsburgh Press on June 15, 1969.

After moving into the former Lascher auto repair shop, Caruso followed a familiar and historically significant pattern in Pennsylvania by converting a garage into a beer distributorship. There are several notable Pittsburgh examples, including the former Tito brothers bootlegging site that became the first place where Rolling Rock beer was sold in the 1930s.

Former Tito brothers bootlegging garage turned beer distributorship. The Pittsburgh City Council designated the building as a historic site, along with the neighboring house where Joe Tito lived. In 2023, the Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission voted to allow the garage’s demolition. Photo by David Rotenstein.

Sam Caruso’s heirs closed the beer distributorship in 2021 and the current owner bought the property in 2024. John Francona, who represented the LLC that bought the property, told the HRC:

It’s kind of been an eyesore since I moved in the neighborhood 26 years ago, but it was a beer distributor so everyone liked it. I’m not exactly sure what it was built as. It could have been built as garages, but it’s a lot of garages for a single-family house. So, it may have been retail. I’m not sure when it became the beer distributor but it’s been there for a long time.

Pittsburgh historic preservation planner Sarah Quinn didn’t have much to offer in the way of the building’s history or the potential impacts posed by the proposed facade work. “The scope of work is restoration of [a] commercial façade along North Taylor Avenue,” Quinn told commissioners. “Staff comments are the proposal is very appropriate and will bring [the] storefront into accordance with the guidelines. Recommended motion is approval.”

The HRC unanimously approved the project.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in history or architectural history to uncover the former beer distributorship’s history and architectural significance. All it would have required is a little bit of curiosity and research.

©2025 D.S. Rotenstein

The path to Mrs. Slater’s living room

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The fireworks have started over my recent NEXTpittsburgh op-ed about the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation’s National Register of Historic Places nomination for a house historic preservationists have dubbed the “National Negro Opera Company House.”

One local historic preservation group complained that my op-ed didn’t give them enough credit. Another hurled threats.

While the preservationists have been circling their wagons and firing their defensive shotguns, none of them has bothered to ask me a few basic questions. One no-brainer is, “What other factual errors in the NRHP nomination are there besides the ones laid out in my article?” I first suggested to PHLF that there were issues with the NRHP nomination as early as the first week in January. Another is, “Why does it matter?”

PHLF is doubling down on its position that the NRHP nomination was defensible and accurate work. A PHLF spokesperson told me in the interview I did with him for the article, “We absolutely stand by it.”

PHLF reiterated its stance in communications with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the state agency that reviews National Register nominations before forwarding them to the National Park Service for a final determination and listing. “We stand behind [the PHLF consultant’s] work 100%,” wrote PHLF’s education coordinator in a February email to the state.

And yet, no one among the preservation crowd is curious about what led me to read the NRHP nomination and to the Hill District living room where I interviewed the 95-year-old woman quoted in my lede: Mrs. Dolores Slater. Nor are they interested in why I made such a fuss about the lack of oral history in the NRHP nomination. It’s not like PHLF didn’t have the money to do oral history — the National Park Service awarded the organization $41,378 to do oral history and the NRHP nomination.

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Crumbs

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Ever wonder what the smallest unit a 7-story concrete cold warehouse can be reduced to? Crumbs, apparently. Crews have gone from carting away boulder-sized concrete debris from the former Federal Cold Storage Co. site to running it through a milling machine and creating massive mounds of historic building crumbs. It looks like they’re reaching the end of the demolition phase. Demolition began in early November 2021 ….

Former Federal Cold Storage Co. building demolition, Pittsburgh, Pa., January 6, 2023.
Former Federal Cold Storage Co. building demolition, Pittsburgh, Pa., January 6, 2023.
Former Federal Cold Storage Co. building demolition, Pittsburgh, Pa., January 6, 2023.

For a complete rundown on this spectacular demolition operation and the building’s history, check out this November 2022 virtual program hosted by the Society for Industrial Archeology:

©2023 D.S. Rotenstein

Performative Regulatory Compliance: The Pennsylvania History Code

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My first experiences with the Pennsylvania History Code (Title 37 of the Pennsylvania Statutes) happened in the late 1980s. I was in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and working as an archaeologist. My employers had lucrative regulatory compliance contracts: working for agencies and private sector entities required to comply with federal and state laws. These laws (the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Pennsylvania History Code) required parties receiving federal and state funds, permits, and licenses to identify historic places, evaluate their significance, and resolve adverse effects to them introduced by the projects triggering regulatory compliance.

Until 1995, compliance with the Pennsylvania History Code meant doing intensive and costly archaeological surveys and excavations. At the time, Pennsylvania’s state archaeologist had a thing for deeply buried prehistoric sites. Consultants had to prove to his satisfaction that they had dug deep enough and used the appropriate technical expertise to reach soils deeper than what the first Native Americans who lived in Pennsylvania ever walked upon. That meant very deep holes and hiring expensive soils science specialists called geomorphologists.

I remember cursing the state archaeologist many times as I dug or supervised the excavation of neat square holes — sometimes using backhoes and other heavy machinery because the soils were so deep — to identify sites that dovetailed with his research interests. Some of my most vivid archaeology fieldwork memories involve working in subfreezing cold temperatures with negative windchill numbers to meet project deadlines and the state archaeologist’s obsession with so-called Paleo sites.

The author standing in an excavation unit in December 1990. Note the mattock pick (on the surface) used to break up the frozen river bottom soil

Back in late 1990 I and a colleague excavated a deep test unit in temperatures so cold that the dirt re-froze between the excavation unit and the screen being used to recover artifacts — if any were to be found. It was so cold that we had to use a mattock pick (typically used for breaking rock) to excavate in the usually fine river bottom soil because it was frozen. We then had to wait in the cold for the geomorphologist to arrive to tell us what we could see for ourselves: there was no archaeological site where a Weis supermarket was going to be built.

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Entertainment ecosystems and the Chitlin’ Circuit

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Pittsburgh’s Wylie Avenue and Washington’s U Street have lots of things in common. They both were Black entertainment hubs and African-American entrepreneurial economic engines in their respective cities’ Black strolls. Memphis author Preston Lauterbach eloquently described “the stroll” in his 2012 book, The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll:

Any place with a sizable [Black] population grew a darktown, and each of these [Black] districts centered on a main thoroughfare, a world unto itself. The maestro, in his hep vernacular, called it “the stroll” (p. 51).

But the stroll was only part of a complicated entertainment ecosystem that extended well beyond a city’s corporate limits. Black entertainment entrepreneurs opened satellite facilities in rural communities beyond the earliest suburbs. These places became popular roadhouses and juke joints in the Chitlin’ Circuit with complicated social and economic ties to their counterparts on the stroll.

Bohemian Caverns, U Street and 11th, Washington, D.C.

In 1931, after racial violence broke out at a new Pittsburgh pool, a pair of Hill District entrepreneurs found a partner in Washington, Pa., 30 miles to the south, to open a swimming resort catering to the region’s African Americans. Norris Beach as it was called became a popular Southwestern Pennsylvania stop in the Chitlin’ Circuit with touring national bands stopping to play during the summers that it operated.

The Pittsburgh Courier, May 26, 1934.

Read more about Norris Beach and its entrepreneurs in my new Pittsburgh Quarterly article, Norris Beach: “Swim Where You Will Be Welcomed.”

© 2021 D.S. Rotenstein

The Pittsburgh mob’s Miami resort

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The Ankara was a popular Pittsburgh nightclub and restaurant. Located just outside the city limits on Route 51 in Pleasant Hills, it opened in 1946. For more than 20 years, the Ankara fed and entertained Pittsburgh residents. Its floor shows, dancing, and ice revues were part of the city’s nightlife golden era. The Ankara, though, was mob owned and operated.

Ankara nightclub souvenir photo cover.

Charles Jamal was a Turkish immigrant who bounced around North America in the years before World War II. He named his new Pittsburgh nightclub for the city in his homeland. Jamal’s organized crime ties beyond the club remain opaque. In 1952, muckraking journalists Jack Lait and Mortimer Lee described Jamal, “a Turk who runs the swank Ankara nightclub” as one of Pittsburgh’s “big boys” in the county outside the city limits, in their survey of American organized crime, U.S.A. Confidential.

You can read more about the Ankara and Jamal in this August 2020 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article. This post digs into the crime family that was closely associated with Jamal and the Ankara from the time the club opened until the early 1960s: Nathan Mattes, et al. MobsBurgh previously featured Nate Mattes and his brother, Irwin, a..k.a., Pittsburgh’s “Big Six” of Gambling. This time around we’re going to highlight the nightclub’s Miami Beach, Florida, namesake, the Ankara Motel.

The American Jewish Outlook, September 1, 1950.

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“Where the hell is Jakie Lerner?”

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“805 was a burner. Where the hell is Jakie Lerner?” That’s how aging racketeer Sam Solomon responded to University of Pittsburgh history graduate student Rob Ruck in 1981 when the latter asked him about a big numbers gambling hit from 1930. Ruck interviewed Solomon for a dissertation (and later book) on Black sport in Pittsburgh, Sandlot Seasons.

In the dissertation and book Ruck didn’t flesh out Lerner’s identity. Also left unsaid was why Lerner might be important in any discussion of Pittsburgh’s organized crime history. Not a fan of unanswered questions, I went looking for Lerner and I found him buried in a suburban Jewish cemetery. Along with his grave, I also found a criminal career spanning more than 60 years and several states. Lerner, it seems, was one of Pittsburgh’s most notable racketeers. He also was misogynist and, as one relative told me, an asshole for whom “describing him as a scoundrel would be a compliment.”

Jakie Lerner’s gravesite, Shaler Township, Pennsylvania.

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The “Big Six”: Pittsburgh racketeer Israel Mattes

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Welcome back to #Mobsburgh.

Israel Mattes was born in Russia and he arrived in Pittsburgh in 1906, along with his mother and four brothers. Abraham Mattes, Esther’s husband and Israel’s father, had come to the city three years earlier. Within 20 years, Israel and his younger brother Nathan became two of the city’s best known Jewish racketeers. Two other brothers, Ben and Sam, also had brushes with the law. This post explores Israel Mattes’s short life and tragic death in a dark Squirrel Hill parking garage. Continue reading →

Pittsburgh’s Kid Angel

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Stories circulated for years in Pittsburgh about the exploits of a Jewish gangster known as “Kid” Angel.  During the 1920s and 1930s, Angel  and his gambling exploits were legendary. “Over town there’s a lad who has been active around the bookie shops where the race track fans pick the horses,” wrote Post-Gazette investigative reporter Ray Sprigle in 1936. ” [Harry] Angel is his name, but everyone knows him as Kid Angel.”

1701 Centre.jpeg

The corner of Centre Avenue and Arthur Street in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, April 2020. In the 1920s, Harry “Kid” Angel had a billiards hall and gambling den at this location.

This visit to #MobsBurgh re-introduces Kid Angel to Pittsburgh readers. Continue reading →

Where the racketeers played: Squirrel Hill’s gambling joints

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This installment of #Mobsburgh returned to Squirrel Hill with a visit to a pair of gambling clubs.

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, December 12, 1952. Source: newspapers.com.

Squirrel Hill is a fashionable Pittsburgh neighborhood long associated with the city’s Jewish residents. In the 1920s, first- and second-generation European immigrants accumulated sufficient capital to move away from crowded Hill District tenements and other parts of the city where they had settled. They brought with them European cultural and religious traditions adapted to American urban life. And, they carried new additions to their economic and social repertoires: Organized crime rackets, including bootlegging and gambling.

Two organized crime institutions associated with sports gambling, games of chance, and numbers gambling emerged in Squirrel Hill. The Beacon Club and the Squirrel Hill Veterans Club provided cozy spaces where the city’s racketeers could drink, gamble, eat, and share information. Racketeers from across the region patronized these clubs and the establishments became frequent targets of Pittsburgh law enforcement raids. Continue reading →