Lutz's Meat Market
The building at 2145 Centre Avenue was, for many years, the home of Lutz’s Meat Market, and the owner’s name is still visible on the building’s cornice.
German immigrant Charles Lutz founded the meat market in 1894 across the street from where he would eventually build a three-story building on the corner of Centre and Elmore Streets. The meat market made up the first floor, and the Lutz family loved on the floors above. Charles ran the shop for 28 and then sold it to his son Karl in 1922.
During the decades surrounding World War II, Lutz’s Meat Market was a popular shopping destination for Black migrants that moved to the Hill. It was known for its quality selection and hiring Black employees as clerks and butchers.
Despite its popularity and the family’s good reputation in the community, Lutz’s was not exempt from tensions during the Civil Rights Movement. During the riots in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in April 1968, many business were ransacked and burned – Lutz’s included.
Lutz's was a popular shopping destination for residents in the Hill due to its quality selection, and the fact that nearly all of the store’s employees were Black.
Karl Lutz decided to retire at 63 years old and sold the business to Cal Cunningham. A Pittsburgh Courier article announced the transition and noted, “Karl Lutz will be missed. He was a kind man and taught Cal everything about the business.” Cunningham, a long-time employee and apprentice to Lutz, ran the market for a year before tragically passing of a cerebral hemorrhage. Unable to keep the business alive, his wife closed the market a few years later.
Lutz's Legacy
Years later, playwright August Wilson would use the Lutz name for a white shop owner character in his 1990 play Two Trains Running. This Lutz character never appears on stage, but complained about by the character Hambone, who is convinced Lutz cheated him out of a pay that was promised. Most August Wilson scholars agree that, while Wilson drew on a familiar name from his past, he did not intend his character to portray the actual Karl Lutz, especially since the fictional business owner did not reflect Karl Lutz’s true character.
More recently, the building has become the home of Nafasi on Centre, a collaboration between the Hill CDC and #ArtsInHD, an initiative of the Hill District Consensus Group. Nafasi on Centre is intended to provide a central hub for innovative artists with Hill District connections; it hosts artist work-space in the basement, a café/gallery on the first floor, and four 1-bedroom apartments and two micro lofts, spread across the second and third floors. The meat market may no longer serve the residents of the Hill District, but it and the Lutz’s family legacy continues to provide a space for residents to come together as a community.
