A few nights ago, tens of thousands of people packed Downtown Pittsburgh for Highmark First Night. The region’s largest New Year’s Eve celebration marked its 30th anniversary with a milestone event spanning the 14 blocks of the Cultural District. Pittsburghers rang in 2024 with a burning 24-foot-tall tree sculpture, puppet-filled parade, and ribbon-cutting to reopen the Clemente Bridge. But the grand finale, of course, was the fireworks show — the last of many in Pittsburgh for the year.
When Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor spoke to Pittsburgh City Paper about the Greenfield Holiday Parade — which also celebrated its 30th anniversary — he stressed the importance of the fireworks. He and his late father, former Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O’Connor, had gone to great lengths to fund them each year, obtaining a special permit to launch from Greenfield’s Magee Field within city limits.
“Pittsburghers love their fireworks,” he said matter-of-factly.
This raised the question — are Pittsburghers nuts about fireworks?
Once you start to tally it up, there are fireworks everywhere: Light Up Night celebrated its 62nd anniversary (its fireworks were originally launched over Point State Park and are now shot off barges on the Allegheny River). The Pirates hosted at least six scheduled fireworks nights at PNC Park last season, and there’s similar fervor at Acrisure Stadium, including pregame and halftime displays, and of course, there’s our Fourth of July celebration. The stadium even lit up for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour last June, igniting orange and purple fireworks as she sang her hit “Lavender Haze.” Then there are the many neighborhood fireworks displays, seemingly in every borough and township.
According to a recent report by WalletHub, Pittsburgh is the number-one city in the nation for “legality of fireworks,” meaning, presumably, that we’re highly permissive of them. The city also ranks 13th overall for best New Year’s Eve celebration, an impressive spot given that ahead of us are bigger cities like New York and Chicago, and taking the top spot is Orlando, the amusement capital of the world.
At this point, I’ll confess — I’m tepid about fireworks. They’re loud, they’re dangerous, causing injuries and deaths, and they can be distressing for people and pets (Pitt Homecoming — yet another instance of fireworks in the city — drives my cat under the couch every fall). They’re also harmful to the environment, deteriorating Pittsburgh’s already abysmal air quality in the short amount of time they take to launch.
At the risk of coming off as even more of a kill-joy, I wonder if fireworks are even that cool. Recent additions of laser and drone shows suggest the spectacle doesn’t command the attention it once did. Aren’t we talking about a technology that hasn’t evolved much in thousands of years?
This last question is where I might be underselling matters. In a 2015 article titled “Pittsburgh’s long-lasting love affair with fireworks,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette delved into the city’s storied history with fireworks, noting that American pyrotechnic celebrations date further back than the country itself, before the Revolutionary War was even won.
“Not surprisingly, the fireworks of yore were a far cry from today’s elaborate displays,” Post-Gazette writer Meredith Carroll explained. “Early Americans delighted in raised platforms on which fireworks were arranged to create patriotic images. Gravity-defying rockets and vivid colors alike were few and far between.”
Part of pyrotechnic “innovation” — and Pittsburgh’s seeming obsession with fireworks — centers around Zambelli Fireworks. The fireworks company’s former headquarters in New Castle, Pa. earned the town a U.S.-patented designation as the “Fireworks Capital of America” (Zambelli moved its base to Cranberry in 2018.)
Family run for three generations, Zambelli Fireworks began when, in 1893, Antonio Zambelli immigrated from Italy to the United States, carrying a legendary black book containing fireworks “recipes.” Gianni DeVincent Hayes wrote in her 2003 book Zambelli: The First Family of Fireworks that, at least up until 20 years ago, most of the fireworks recipes in the country were highly guarded trade secrets “usually written in black books that remain in the possession of the family patriarch… [where] generally no backup copies exist.” Zambelli’s recipes were written in Italian and locked in a safe.
Since its founding, the company has put on fireworks displays large and small around Pittsburgh, including at the old Three Rivers Regatta and the well-known Pirates postgame Zambelli Fireworks show. The company even set a world record for altitude when it shot fireworks from the top of the U.S. Steel Tower.
But Zambelli has, over the decades, cast a wide net, launching fireworks at presidential inaugurations (the company history highlights John F. Kennedy’s) and White House state dinners, as well as at the the 1981 wedding of then Prince Charles and Lady Diana, the Times Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve, Mount Rushmore, and the Kentucky Derby. A large chunk of the company’s business still occurs across two days, July 3rd and 4th, with Zambelli fireworks appearing at an estimated 800 celebrations taking place around the country.
Throw 130 years of history and a name like “Fireworks Capital of America” at me and the Pittsburgh pride kicks in. In her book, DeVincent Hayes makes her case for fireworks, writing, “There’s something special about shooting fire across a black background.” A review of the book praises fireworks as “jewelry for the sky.” On the whole, I remain ambivalent, but I’ll always support Pittsburgh’s capacity for unchecked enthusiasm, however irrational.
