Teenie’s darkroomA modest house with a photographic memory

One day in the late 1930s or early ’40s, a small slender man stood on a sidewalk on Mulford Street in Homewood, raised a boxy camera to his eye and framed a picture of his house. The man valued elegance. He favored sharp suits, stylish fedoras, black shoes polished to a shine. Surely he was pleased by the details of the scene before him.

He cocked the shutter. Then, click.

The picture Charles “Teenie” Harris created that day shows a simple but refined 2½-story clapboard house distinct from its neighbors. A massive awning gracefully flows over a porch with brightly painted balusters. The lawn is perfectly trimmed. Shrubs line up with soldierly precision along a concrete walk. Parked on the street is a gleaming 1938 Cadillac, an exclamation mark with white-wall tires.

It’s an image that accurately reflects the aesthetic of the man whose labors would for decades remain largely unappreciated. Now that the world recognizes the immense value of Teenie Harris’ work, his children wonder: Can the Harris home at 7604 Mulford St. help to tell his story and create a broader understanding of the African American experience in Pittsburgh?

Day after day, year after year, he stepped out of this house, climbed into his car — often a Cadillac — and motored off to photograph life in the city’s Black community. From the 1930s to the mid-’70s, he documented birthday parties, baseball games, political rallies, protests, church events, press conferences, concerts, parades. He photographed people hanging out in restaurants, men playing checkers on the sidewalk, work crews, street scenes.

The list of celebrities he photographed includes Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Muhammad Ali. But his most moving photographs depict people whose presence would otherwise go unnoticed by history.

One such picture dates to the early 1930s and focuses on Otho Brown. Census records indicate he worked as a porter and laborer. Dressed in a light pinstriped shirt, suspenders and a plaid tie, he sits next to a window — perhaps in the Mulford Street house, according to a caption — and reads a newspaper. It’s a peek into a world recognized by few outside the city’s Black community.

Harris died in 1998. A few years later, the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired his collection of negatives, now preserved in the Teenie Harris Archive. But the house that served as a base of operations for much of his career seems forgotten, its white siding stained with grime, its porch enveloped by weeds and overgrown shrubs.

“It breaks my heart every time I see it,” said Harris’ daughter Crystal Pass.

Members of his family, including all three of his surviving children, believe the house deserves recognition, perhaps in the form of a plaque or official designation as a building of historic importance.

‘Who lived there’

Melissa McSwigan, director emeritus of Preservation Pittsburgh, says the house certainly deserves to be a city historic landmark. “It could bring a real sense of Pittsburgh and community pride to have the house landmarked,” she said.

There’s nothing special about its structure, but that doesn’t matter, Ms. McSwigan said. Modest buildings like the one on Mulford Street “can help tell the stories of the people who lived there.”

And the Harris family story is worth telling, given their deep connections to Pittsburgh history.

It’s a sentiment shared by historian Carmen DiCiccio, who has conducted primary work in historic preservation for the state and for private companies. He said the Mulford Street house should be on the National Register of Historic Places.

“This is National Register material,” he said. “This one is a no-brainer.”

The process of gaining landmark status at the city level involves researching and writing a history of the house and those who lived there; obtaining a recommendation from the city’s historic review commission; and getting approval from the planning commission, city council and the mayor. Key to the process is working with the Harris family, Ms. McSwigan said, because the process begins with those who own the house, “but we’d be thrilled to collaborate with them.”

A family’s history

Teenie’s older brother, William “Woogie” Harris, bought the Mulford Street property and house in 1923 for $7,500, deed books show.

Woogie Harris emerged in a city blazing with the fires of industry — and with a nightlife fueled by music, dancing and, despite prohibition, booze. He was a VIP at clubs like the Paramount, a Lower Hill District joint owned by his pal, Gus Greenlee. The two men became pioneers in the city’s lucrative numbers racket.

Woogie used his earnings to support his family, help Black-owned businesses and buy property in the Lower Hill District, Homewood and Penn Hills.

In the early 1920s, brothers Teenie, Woogie and the eldest, George Harris, lived in a Wylie Avenue boarding house operated by their mother, Ella Mae, known as “Olga.” The Masio Hotel provided rooms to Black men who’d migrated to Pittsburgh to find whatever jobs were available to them. A 1920 census report reveals the hotel as a microcosm of the Great Migration, with boarders from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., working as miners, porters, bellboys, hostlers, shoe shiners, janitors and laborers.

Ella Mae closed the hotel in the early 1930s and moved to Mulford Street. A 1934 Pittsburgh city directory lists Teenie as a resident there, too.

By 1938, directories identified Teenie as a photographer with a studio in the Hill District and a home on Mulford. Six years later, he married Elsa Lee Elliot. On Mulford Street, the couple raised their children: Ira Vann, Lionel, Crystal and Cheryl. (Teenie’s oldest son, Charles “Little Teenie,” came from his first marriage.)

A workaholic

The sheer volume of Harris’ archive implies the man worked constantly. It consists of approximately 80,000 negatives, which means he produced an average of more than five pictures each day of his 40-year career — a notable achievement given his habit of shooting only one frame at each event. He shot the majority for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s most influential Black newspapers.

“My dad, he was a very happy-go-lucky person, but he was a workaholic,” said son Lionel, 75.

Calls could come any time of the day or night. “I have to give it to my mother because I don’t know how she did it,” said daughter Crystal, 70. “He would get out of his bed and go take pictures … whenever they needed him. They would call if there was something that happened on the Hill or if somebody in town came through, like Walt Harper or Georgie Benson.”