Booming Family
Go inside the Zambelli fireworks factory in New Castle.
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.
After a fireworks festival in Oman, the Sultan of Oman presented Zambelli Fireworks with this commemorative statue.
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.
It was George Zambelli Sr. who expanded the Zambelli empire to its current prominence. “He’s the icon,” his son says.
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.
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.
This 1920s dynamite blaster fired a precisely timed explosion from a distance.
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.”
This shell explodes into a heart pattern. Zambelli can make fireworks shaped like hearts, stars, yellow ribbons and more.
A Zambelli employee mixes Zambelli’s secret formula for the company’s brilliant blue effect.
Bill Gallentine fuses shell leaders together to produce a Zambelli grand finale chain.
Bob Michael illustrates Zambelli’s large fanned gold comet candles.
Four-inch Zambelli cannisters filled with pyrotechnic stars await the spiking process.
Four-inch Zambelli cannisters filled with pyrotechnic stars await the spiking process.
Half of a spherical canister filled with colorful Zambelli pyrotechnic stars.
Jared Zambelli, a fourth-generation Zambelli family member, places the time fuse in the top of a cylindrical canister.
Lou Zambelli, cavalier pyrotechnician, spikes a canister with heavy string in the spiking room. Spiking enhances the power and diameter of the burst.
Mark Spielvogel designs a static pyrotechnic illumination of the Pittsburgh Magazine logo.
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.
