Venue: Crawford Grill
Town: Pennsylvania, US

The Crawford Grill was a renowned jazz club that operated in two locations in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, the second Crawford Grill venue hosted local and nationally recognized acts, including jazz legends Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Kenny Burrell. The club, an important social gathering spot for Pittsburgh's African-American communities, drew devoted listeners from the region's ethnically and racially diverse population making it a rare site of interracial socializing during the civil rights period. The Crawford Grill was one of many black-owned neighborhood clubs in the Eastern United States that supported a tour circuit for small jazz ensembles during the genre's "golden age". Despite the riots of 1968, which severely damaged the neighborhood's economic infrastructure, the club continued to operate until 2003, when it was shuttered. In 2010, a group of local investors purchased the property with the goal of restoring and reopening the location as a venue and restaurant. The Crawford Grill can be best understood as the outgrowth of a broader set of social institutions that flourished in the Hill District neighborhood in the early 1900s. Known as "black-and-tan clubs", these venues featured black artists and catered to mixed-race patrons. The Leader House (1401 Wylie Avenue) and the Collins Inn (1213 Wylie Avenue) were two "black-and-tan clubs" that operated in the 1910s that were important because they offered a means through which entrepreneur William "Gus" Greenlee would enter the entertainment industry in the Hill District and would later become the Crawford Grill and Black Musicians' Union Club. The high standard of entertainment was established by pianist Earl Hines, who began his career as a jazz musician in the Hill District when he was hired by bandleader Lois Deppe to perform at the Leader House, and violinist Vernie Robinson at the Collins In