The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, located in Springfield, Massachusetts, preserves and promotes the game’s legacy at the professional and amateur levels and serves as basketball’s ultimate library of the sport’s history. Inside the Basketball Hall of Fame, visitors can marvel at the collected memorabilia and then sit down in the elegance of Pazzo Ristorante to enjoy superb steaks and brick-oven pizzas while continuing their discussions about the best players and teams of all time.

Recently, Pazzo Ristorante underwent a facelift to better reflect the personal style of owners Casey Petruccio and Stephen Delguimo. Karen Tesini, showroom manager for Boston Tile, assisted Petruccio with the selection of tile and natural stone. Based upon the size and composition of the tile and stone, Karen impressed upon the restaurateur that he should insist on MAPEI’s Ultracontact™ mortar for the large-format floor tiles and Ultralite Mortar™ for the wall tiles.

The installers set the 18” x 18” (46 x 46 cm) beige Frames tiles from Rex Ceramiche using Ultracontact, MAPEI’s full-contact mortar that assures coverage of the tile without the need for back-buttering. To be sure the floors will always look great, the installers used Ultracolor® ultra premium sanded grout. Ultracolor is specially formulated with MAPEI’s High-Hydrated Cement Technology (HCT™) to eliminate problems often seen with Portland-cement grout, such as color consistency and efflorescence. The Frames tiles were accented with Imperador Brown marble insets from Boston Tile. Keracolor™ U, an unsanded grout from MAPEI, was applied around the marble insets, which had extremely small grout joints.

The restaurant owners wanted to use tile on much of the walls in the food preparation area as well – especially around the brick oven. In addition, they tiled floors, ceilings and walls in the bathrooms. For all the vertically applied tile, the installers depended on Ultralite Mortar™, a lightweight, nonsag mortar that has superior performance on walls. Both the grouts and the Ultralite Mortar contain MAPEI’s BioBlock™ technology for antimicrobial protection*.

When the tile installation was complete and the restaurant was open for business, Karen Tesini was one of the first visitors. “Boston Tile is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and we’re proud to see our products in places like Pazzo here at the Basketball Hall of Fame,” said Ms. Tesini.