Brownsville Northside Historic District

Brownsville's Northside is a hillside neighborhood of closely spaced brick houses, commercial rows and nine churches overlooking the Monongahela River. Its early core dates from the National Road, which reached the town by 1817 and carried settlers west, and Market Street still holds a row of five three-story mercantile buildings dating from about 1815 to 1840. Brashear's Tavern, begun around 1797 by Basil Brashear, hosted Lafayette, Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. Traffic declined after 1852, when the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad bypassed the town, and the district later became residential. Its Colonial Revival and Craftsman houses reflect the boom that followed the coal and coke industry's arrival in the early twentieth century. The churches reflect the ethnic groups that settled in the town, from English and Scotch-Irish to Slovak and Hungarian congregations.