The Sanders Inn: A Prohibition-Era Roadhouse

Get into some local history about a little known Pittsburgh roadhouse in the 20s!

Fred and Lillian Sanders were hosting popular tea dances when Prohibition began in 1920. The couple rented a mansion built by former U.S. Senator James Ross and opened a roadhouse. The Sanders Inn offered fine dining, live music, dancing, and illegal beverages. Long before Fred and Lillian arrived, the mansion and its sprawling grounds had been used as a picnic grove, an anthropology museum, and an amusement park. Join Dr. David Rotenstein to learn more about the site’s history from the post-Civil War years to the 1950s when developers razed the nightclub and replaced it with one of the area’s first strip malls.

Dr. David Rotenstein is a historian writer documenting the social history of vice in Pittsburgh. He is the proprietor of Steel City Vice (walking tours, public programs) and a contributor to local magazines and news sites. David wrote about the Sanders Inn for Shady Ave magazine in early 2023.