You are here

Western Pennsylvania » The Western Capital—Pittsburgh and Allegheny County » North Side and the Allegheny Valley » Penn Brewery

Penn Brewery

-A A +A
Eberhardt and Ober Brewing Company
1894 brewhouse, Joseph Stillburg. 800 Vinial St.
  • (Photograph by Cbaile19)

Penn Brewery hugs the base of Troy Hill immediately across PA 28 from the Heinz plant (AL81). After the Civil War, German workers from the tanneries, breweries, and meatpacking industries gravitated to Troy Hill. In 1870, two brothers-in-law from Troy Hill, John Ober and William Eberhardt, took over this site in the hollow of the hill, where beer had been brewed since the 1840s, and built their brewery. It joined the Pittsburgh Brewing Company in 1899 and remained in operation until 1952, after which the buildings deteriorated.

In 1986, the North Side Civic Development Council initiated a program to revitalize the area's economy, using a mix of public and private funding. Part of the old brewery was restored for Penn Brewery and part was recycled into offices for the Brewery Innovation Center, an incubator of small start-up companies. The squat-towered brewhouse accommodates a restaurant and microbrewery, while some thirty tenant companies and their common support services use the brick office building (1897) next door. The Romanesque Revival–styled bottling building across Vinial Street is now independent of the brewery.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Lu Donnelly et al.
×

Data

Timeline

  • 1894

    Built

  • 1952

    Abandoned

  • 1986

    Restored

What's Nearby

Heinz Lofts
Sixteenth Street Bridge
The Priory and Grand Hall
Allegheny General Hospital
2425 Liberty Avenue (Westinghouse Air-Brake Company)

Citation

Lu Donnelly et al., "Penn Brewery", [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-01-AL82.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 1

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, Lu Donnelly, H. David Brumble IV, and Franklin Toker. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, 98-99.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,