Spring forecast for new SpeakBreezy venue is a series of mini concerts

Dennis Inserra, sitting among antique furniture in a room off the kitchen of the Breezeway Home in Point Breeze, knows the story of this place by heart.

The sun-drenched building at the corner of Reynolds Street and Le Roi Road has gone through many iterations in its lifetime. Built in the late 19th century as a utility barn, 7113 Reynolds St. has been a speakeasy, a grocery store and an art studio, among other small businesses. When Inserra started renting the place in 1990, he made the then-massage studio into his home.

Inserra raised his daughter here, a short walk down from The Frick Pittsburgh, in what he likes to call Point Breeze’s “uptown.” He bought the building in 2000 and started construction, turning it into the cottage-like space of the present.

Salons, parties and other celebrations were held in the home over the years, with Inserra playing host.

Dennis Inserra, owner of Breezeway Home, an event space in Point Breeze, stands inside the venue on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023. (Alexandra Wimley/Union Progress)

By 2014, his daughter was primarily running a business, called PointBreezeway, out of the building. For eight years, the family operation hosted weddings, parties, concerts and other events, and rented out the upstairs with Airbnb until Inserra’s daughter decided to move the company over to Ineffable Ca Phe in Lawrenceville in late 2022.

In the wake of that decision, Inserra is hoping to keep the Breezeway Home open in the role it’s always occupied: as a neighborhood gathering spot.

That spot will play host to a series of benefit concerts in the coming months, beginning with local folk band Smokestack Lightning on Wednesday and closing out with renowned blues guitarist Ernie Hawkins and harmonica player Clint Hoover on June 24.

Inserra considers Reynolds Street, flanked by Mellon Park on one end and The Frick on the other, to be the neighborhood’s secret arts corridor. Music, he notes, seemed the perfect fit for the space.

At one point, Inserra’s daughter started operating a cafe — serving coffee, tea and light fare — out of the space. He hopes to continue that alongside the music.

Mike Minnock, Inserra’s partner in the new endeavor, entered the picture by happenstance.

Breezeway Home will soon host a series of benefit concerts. (Alexandra Wimley/Union Progress)

“I was walking by one day, and it seemed like there was going to be something happening here,” Minnock says. “Dennis waved, I walked in the door, and he kind of gave me the spiel.”

Minnock had recently started his own company, Minnock Marketing, and offered to build a website for Inserra to help him move forward with the space.

That project morphed into an idea for a whole new business — SpeakBreezy, a name that harkens back to the building’s Prohibition-era operation as a speakeasy. The goal, Inserra says, is to expand the space into something more public-facing. Part of this, Inserra says, is so the neighborhood — not just Inserra and Minnock —can have a say in what becomes of the Breezeway Home.

“We need to know that whatever’s here is attractive to the neighborhood, that the neighborhood feels like they’re welcome and that they make use of it, maybe even in greater numbers and frequency than they did when it was PointBreezeway,” Inserra says.

With the benefit concerts, Inserra and Minnock also hope to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations of Point Breeze.

“The whole point is to make this the worst-kept secret,” Inserra says.