This past fall, Howze added his own milestone to the building\u2019s timeline. He was married inside the August Wilson House, the first wedding ever held there.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMGL8292.jpg\")
Nov. 8, 2025, Reggie Howze and Shawna Bridgett Howze were married inside the August Wilson House. Wedding photos by Ricco J.L. Martello courtesy of Shawna Bridgett Howze.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Hill never slept\u2018<\/p>\n
Howze was born in 1945 \u201cright in the beating heart\u201d of the Hill District, during what many still call its cultural peak, Pittsburgh\u2019s version of \u201cLittle Harlem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that time, the Hill District was more like Las Vegas,\u201d he says. \u201cSong in the air, laughter on the sidewalks, neon lights in every window. All night long. The Hill never slept.\u201d<\/p>\n
Centre Avenue was a jazz corridor<\/a>. Clubs hosted Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Strayhorn. The Crawford Grill pulsed as a major cultural hub. Black-owned businesses flourished, including world-class jazz clubs, clothing shops, doctors\u2019 offices, beauty parlors and restaurants. The neighborhood functioned as a self-contained economy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you needed a brand-new shirt, you could go to the shirt store. New tire, new shoes, whatever you needed,\u201d Howze says. \u201cYou never had to leave the Hill District for anything.\u201d<\/p>\n He grew up across from the Ringside, a bar owned by a former professional boxer. Up the street, the Musicians Club brought in touring legends.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ladies came out of the cabs with stockings on, long gloves, big hats,\u201d he says. \u201cHoliday dressed so beautifully. The men wore suits. Big hats. That\u2019s the way they traveled.\u201d<\/p>\n When he was 4 he discovered he could shimmy down the narrow alley between his house and the one next door.<\/p>\n \u201cThe alley was so skinny,\u201d he says. \u201cI could put one foot on my house and one foot on the building next door and slide all the way down to the street.\u201d<\/p>\n Below him, music pulsed through the night.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was filled with music all night long,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I lived right in the heart of it.\u201d<\/p>\n That ecosystem began to fracture in the mid-1950s, when the city used eminent domain to clear roughly 95 acres of the Lower Hill for construction of the Civic Arena<\/a>. More than 1,000 buildings were demolished. An estimated 8,000 residents were displaced.<\/p>\n \u201cThe city came in and just declared possession of the whole neighborhood,\u201d Howze says. \u201cThey tore it all down. Blocks and blocks and blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n The Civic Arena was demolished in 2012. Redevelopment of the site continues<\/a>. The dense Black commercial spine that once defined Centre Avenue did not return.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t even buy any decent fresh food in the Hill District now,\u201d he says. \u201cYou never had to leave before. You have to go out the Hill District for everything that\u2019s worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n Sitting next to history<\/p>\n In elementary school, Howze sat beside Frederick August Kittel Jr. He recalls that their last names placed them alphabetically near one another.<\/p>\n \u201cFor five years we sat close to each other,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Kittel struggled with a severe stutter.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took him several minutes to say one sentence,\u201d Howze recalls. \u201cYou had to have patience. I was one of the few who stood around long enough to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n In fifth grade, when a classmate stole someone\u2019s lunch, the teacher blamed Kittel.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody knew he didn\u2019t do it,\u201d Howze says. \u201cThe boy who did it had crumbs all over his mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n The teacher pushed him toward the door. His arm was in a sling. Howze remembers him retaliating.<\/p>\n \u201cAugust was a fierce, fierce, fierce defender of his character. Everybody knew. You don\u2019t bully August.\u201d<\/p>\n The boy would become August Wilson, the playwright whose 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle chronicled Black American life across the 20th century.<\/p>\n Born Frederick August Kittel Jr., he later took his mother\u2019s surname, Wilson. His father, a German immigrant baker, was largely absent. His mother, Daisy Wilson, raised him in the Hill District. The name change reflected both familial loyalty and a conscious embrace of the Black identity that would shape his work.<\/p>\n Howze also remembers the racial complexity Wilson carried as a child.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had a white dad and a Black mom,\u201d Howze says. \u201cSo he was dealing with a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Not a museum<\/p>\n Howze left Pittsburgh in 1964 and spent decades moving among cities, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, working in commercial cleaning, film development and other trades.<\/p>\n In 1968, Howze reconnected with Wilson through Black Horizon Theater<\/a>, co-founded by his older brother Sala Udin<\/a>, Wilson and writer Rob Penny. They traveled to Hofstra University and to Spirit House in Newark to perform.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t admit it but they got me because I was the only one with an automobile,\u201d he says. \u201cNone of them drove.\u201d<\/p>\n When Howze returned to Pittsburgh in 2023 after decades away, he visited the August Wilson\u00a0house during renovations and was alarmed.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were doing a terrible job,\u201d he says. \u201cEven I could see it.\u201d<\/p>\n He found out who chaired the board and contacted them. He delivered what he calls \u201ca piece of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n The contractors were replaced. Howze credits Denise Turner, acting chief executive and board president of the August Wilson House, for intervening quickly. Once the restoration was complete, he began showing up daily to tend the exterior. At first he volunteered. After about a year, the organization began paying him.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted it to look as good as any elite civic institution,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n On Aug. 17, 2022, the City of Pittsburgh proclaimed \u201cReggie Howze Sr. Day,\u201d recognizing his community commitment and neighborhood beautification efforts.<\/p>\n The house itself is modest, with a narrow staircase, small rooms and quintessential old Pittsburgh brick exterior. Wilson grew up there with five siblings and their mother, with a father \u201cin and out,\u201d Howze says. Two rooms held much of the sleeping. At times, Wilson slept on the kitchen floor. The physical footprint is tight. The artistic imagination it produced was not.<\/p>\n Wilson would go on to win two Pulitzer Prizes. His childhood home was nearly demolished in the early 2000s before preservationists and community leaders intervened. In 2022, it was designated a National Historic Landmark<\/a>. For the Hill, the designation marked something larger, a reclaimed landmark in a neighborhood that had lost thousands of structures.<\/p>\n The house, Howze says, is trying to follow Wilson\u2019s intention.<\/p>\n \u201cAugust never wanted his house to be a shrine or a museum,\u201d he says. \u201cHe never wanted people to just come and look, and just preserve the place where he lived. He never wanted that.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, he says, Wilson wanted it \u201cfunctional.\u201d \u201cSomething people could use.\u201d<\/p>\n The organization that operates the house runs playwriting workshops, artist residencies, oral history projects, community events and cultural convenings. The \u201cVoices of History\u201d archive captures lived memory before it disappears.<\/p>\n A wedding in a reclaimed house<\/p>\n When August Wilson died in 2005, he was buried in Pittsburgh, the city that shaped his 10-play American Century Cycle. His funeral was held at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland.<\/p>\n Howze was the first pallbearer. \u201cIt was packed,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was star-studded. And it was just beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Crystal-Barbershop-URA.jpg\")
The Crystal Barber Shop at 1400 Wylie Ave. in the Hill District featured a clock that was a neighborhood fixture in the 1940s. URA photograph courtesy City of Pittsburgh Archives.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Lower-Hill-Razing-scaled.jpg\")
Buildings being demolished in 1957 during urban renewal in the Lower Hill District. Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection via historicpittsburgh.org.<\/p>\n![\"August](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Photo-by-Joseph-Mehling.png\")
August Wilson. Photo by Joseph Mehling.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_20260215_123401-scaled.jpg\")
Reggie Howze outside of the August Wilson House. Photo courtesy of Shawna Bridgett Howze.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-09-29-at-3.16.45-PM-e1664479060708.png\")
August Wilson House. Photo courtesy of Ed Massery Photography. <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMGL7981.jpg\")
Photo courtesy of Shawna Bridgett Howze.<\/p>\n