Historical Note: The Tito House, Pittsburgh, PA

The Tito House, 1817 5th Ave, Pittsburgh
August 2025

Last August I was exploring Pittsburgh's Uptown neighborhood and discovered this rather augustly decaying house along 5th Avenue. Just recently I learned that the place - current state notwithstanding - is a controversial historical landmark. The circa 1884 house was once home to Joe Tito, part owner of the great Negro League team the Pittsburgh Crawfords, prominent bootlegger during prohibition, owner Latrobe Brewing Company, and key figure in the rise of the La Cosa Nostra crime family. Tito built the brick garage still standing on the lot in 1922 to host the trucks moving his bootleg whiskey and beer throughout the region. At the close of prohibition Tito and two brothers purchased the Latrobe Brewery assets, purportedly for money laundering purposes. But by 1935 Frank Tito was advertising Rolling Rock Ale, available at the garage, which now served as their Pittsburgh area beer distribution center, a function that would until circa 1977. The House would remain in the Tito family until 1973.

Tito House garage, 1818 Colwell, Pittsburgh
Google photo - Oct 2024

One bit of serendipity in a search for information about the house is the expansive historic site nomination form by David S. Rotenstein, which provides a broad and highly readable addendum -- "Addendeum 8 (History)" -- on not just the Titos, but the history of underground economies among marginalized American populations in Pittsburgh and cities around the country. I quote a few tidbits below and recommend reading the original to anyone interested in the era.

The last I heard, the city's Historic Review Commission approved the demolition of the garage and preservation of the house to make way for 254-unit housing project. The builders said they plan to recreate the facade of the garage on the property.

Selected notes from the Historic Site Nomination Form, by David S. Rotenstein, PhD 

"The Tito brothers began making headlines in 1922 for hauling and hijacking liquor. In December 1922, federal Prohibition agents raided four Penn Avenue establishments seizing more than 140 stills and other bootlegging paraphernalia, including trucks observed leaving the sites. Frank and Robert Tito were among the people arrested. Joe Tito subsequently petitioned a U.S. District Court judge to return two trucks seized. “The trucks were seized last week while it is alleged, beer was being transported in them,” reported the Post-Gazette. The dispute over the seized trucks spanned nearly four years and in 1927 a federal judge vacated the judgements against the Titos and others. 

In 1923, Joe and Frank Tito were arrested for hauling beer labeled as “syrup” away from the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company yards. According to the Post-Gazette account, Joe lived at 1817 Fifth Avenue and the brothers each got a $100 fine. One year later, Joe Tito was sentenced to serve eight months in the Allegheny County jail for another arrest and conviction for conspiring with A. Guckenheimer & Company to transport illegal liquor."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Sep 20, 1939

"Joe Tito clearly occupied a prominent position in Pittsburgh’s organized crime hierarchy. By 1932 he might have been one of the city’s leading organized crime bosses who built his wealth and power in bootlegging and numbers gambling. Newspapers reporting on his questioning in the Volpe triple murder case recognized that he was a special case. The Post-Gazette reported that Tito was shown “special consideration” while being questioned: “His entrance and exit were made with the utmost concern for his privacy.”32 Tito achieved his powerful position in a well-established organized crime setting with roots in the mid-nineteenth century.

These activities comprised a significant informal economy in Pittsburgh and other places that provided thousands of jobs to immigrants from Europe and Blacks arriving from the South in the Great Migration. Informal vice economies offered economic and social opportunities to groups that faced anti-Semitism, anti-Black racism, and anti-Catholicism. Unable to land good jobs in Pittsburgh’s mills, buy and rent homes with racial and ethnic deed covenants attached to them, join prestigious social and civic organizations, and achieve the same levels of economic and social success open to other Pittsburgh residents, Pittsburgh’s early racketeers made their own parallel society in vice."

Joe Tito on steps of 1817 5th Avenue
Photo: Donna Brusco, via CityPaper

 'And finally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation compiled substantial testimony and evidence that document Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney built his sports empire in numbers gambling, sports betting, and slot machines. “Art Rooney, he was in with them guys on the North Side,” aging racketeer Sam Solomon told University of Pittsburgh historian Rob Ruck in a 1980 oral history interview. “They had the bulk of the numbers on the North Side.” '

-- 

The house was occupied by members of the Brusco family in 1968, when the occupants faced serious potential danger in the Hill District violence in the wake of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. Donna Brusco recalled her father alerting police and sending her to bring back her grandmother Anna from the house for safety:

"Brusco arrived at the house and her grandmother was standing on the porch. About a dozen National Guard troops were lounging around in the front and side yards. Brusco recalls her grandmother yelling, "What are you kids doing out?" Brusco explained that her father had sent her to bring Anna to Mt. Washington and Zizza replied, "You tell your dad I'm staying. I promised these boys spaghetti."

 

 

1817 5th Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Constructed c.1884

(Associated garage at 1818 Colwell, c.1922)
Links: Historic Site Nomination Form - citypaper - historian4hire - vafweb - pittsburghpa.gov