Crawford Grill #2

Woogie Harris on Piano at Crawford Grill #2.
Photo by Charles "Teenie" Harris.
Photo courtesy of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Reprinted with permission.

Pittsburgh’s strong manufacturing economy in the 1940s and 1950s created a steady stream of factory workers looking for entertainment as soon as their shifts let out. They found it in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. As late night jazz music flourished in The Hill, the neighborhood and its clubs became destinations for city workers and wealthier suburbanites alike. Pittsburgh’s own “Little Harlem” was born, and it was open 24 hours a day.

Opened in 1943 by infamous millionaire Gus Greenlee (who later owned the Negro League baseball team The Pittsburgh Crawfords), The Crawford Grill’s second location at 2141 Wylie Avenue expanded the venue’s legacy by welcoming national jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane.

But it was The Crawford’s reputation for fostering the talent of local artists like Art Blakey, Mary Lou Williams and Erroll Garner—and the ability to draw a racially- and economically-mixed crowd of music lovers--that established its place as the cultural epicenter of The Hill District.

While a third and even fourth Crawford Grill opened (and closed) on Pittsburgh’s North Side neighborhood of Manchester and the Station Square Area, it was the shuttering of Crawford Grill #2 in 2002 that was felt most deeply by the Hill District and generations of jazz lovers. The closing represented not only a finished chapter in Pittsburgh musical history, but a bittersweet commentary on the decline of one of Pittsburgh’s most thriving African American neighborhoods.