Citizens Live at the Wylie officially opens in the Hill District

When concertgoers climb the broad staircase from street level to the lobby of Citizens Live at The Wylie, they’ll be accompanied each step of the way by the iconic photographs of Charles “Teenie” Harris. Most yinzers know — or should know — that Harris was the chronicler of Black life in Pittsburgh from the 1930s until well into the ‘70s. There are thousands of black and white photos of weddings, Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays games, sons home from the war, and the everyday events in the Hill District and beyond in the Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive at the Carnegie Museum of Art . But Harris was often on the scene for the high times too: Backstage or up front at the Crawford Grill on Wylie Avenue, where the world’s best jazz musicians regularly played. Citizens Live makes lavish use of Harris’ photos of Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Pittsburgh natives Ahmad Jamal and George Benson, caught when they were very young, as well as the city’s baseball players, newlyweds and war heroes. Citizens Live has a colorful backstory of its own, and it’s entwined with the history of the Hill District. In the late 1950s, bowing to pressure from wealthy patrons and Downtown corporations, the city used eminent domain to displace 8,000 residents and 400 businesses on the Lower Hill in order to build the Civic Arena. The “urban renewal” project cut the heart from the Hill. When the Pittsburgh Penguins, who had played at the Arena from 1967 to 2010, decided to tear it down and replace it with the Consol Energy Center (now PPG Paints Arena), as well as a live music venue and parking garage, all stakeholders — the Penguins, the city, Hill community groups and Live Nation, which would co-own and operate the venue — agreed it was time to confront the past and reconsider the future. Alyce Brooks at the Crawford Grill No. 1 c. 1945–1951. Photo by Charles “Teenie” Harris courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Art arch