Booming Family
Go inside the Zambelli fireworks factory in New Castle.
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This is the shipping building. The campus has more than 50 buildings spread out over 250 acres — and they’re all built with concrete walls and thin roofs so that an accidental explosion will be directed upward rather than outward.
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After a fireworks festival in Oman, the Sultan of Oman presented Zambelli Fireworks with this commemorative statue.
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By day, George Jr. is an ophthalmologist. This one-of-a-kind statue was made for him by a sculptor he met at the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
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It was George Zambelli Sr. who expanded the Zambelli empire to its current prominence. “He’s the icon,” his son says.
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Antonio and Mary Zambelli moved to the U.S. from Italy in 1893. Antonio first started working with pyrotechnics in his off-hours; he was a steelworker by day.
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A 5-inch mortar rack. An “electronic match” connects to the computer system that runs the show; today, Zambelli uses computers to time and fire displays.
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This 1920s dynamite blaster fired a precisely timed explosion from a distance.
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In the old days, you’d light each firework manually, using a “punk” like this one, made out of a burlap sack. “It’s more fun to shoot by hand,” George Jr. says. “It’s like shooting mortars — but no one’s shooting back.”
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This shell explodes into a heart pattern. Zambelli can make fireworks shaped like hearts, stars, yellow ribbons and more.
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A Zambelli employee mixes Zambelli’s secret formula for the company’s brilliant blue effect.
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Bill Gallentine fuses shell leaders together to produce a Zambelli grand finale chain.
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Bob Michael illustrates Zambelli’s large fanned gold comet candles.
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Four-inch Zambelli cannisters filled with pyrotechnic stars await the spiking process.
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Four-inch Zambelli cannisters filled with pyrotechnic stars await the spiking process.
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Half of a spherical canister filled with colorful Zambelli pyrotechnic stars.
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Jared Zambelli, a fourth-generation Zambelli family member, places the time fuse in the top of a cylindrical canister.
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Lou Zambelli, cavalier pyrotechnician, spikes a canister with heavy string in the spiking room. Spiking enhances the power and diameter of the burst.
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Mark Spielvogel designs a static pyrotechnic illumination of the Pittsburgh Magazine logo.
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Ray Loffredo combines the two hemi-spheres of a large chrysanthemum canister.
Photos by Renee Rosensteel
You’ll find three generations of the Zambelli family spread out among the company’s vast fireworks factory in New Castle: George Zambelli Jr., M.D., the current Chairman of the Board; his uncle, Lou, who, at age 86, is still putting together custom shells on a daily basis; and George Jr.’s sons, George III and Jared, who are getting ready to carry the family name into the 21st century. Patriarch Antonio Zambelli began working with pyrotechnics as a hobby in the 1800s; his sons took up the business shortly after World War II.
In 1955, the company orchestrated eight displays the week of July 4; by 2000, the number had risen to 800. Today, Zambelli Fireworks puts on more than 2,500 displays every year, from downtown Pittsburgh to Switzerland — and beyond.
