Eberhardt and Ober Brewery

Red brick buildings on a hillside corner at the base of Troy Hill in Pittsburgh's North Side make up the surviving core of the Eberhardt & Ober Brewery. Built between 1883 and 1914, the group includes the Racking, Wash and Storage Building, a four-story structure with a pyramidal-roofed tower, and the 1897 Office Building, which carries a stone inscription reading Rebuilt 1897. Stone vaults and manmade cooling caves run into the hillside, a siting typical of breweries before refrigeration. The complex is regarded as the oldest of only three surviving brewery complexes in the city and the only one on the North Side, which was then the City of Allegheny. It is also the last remaining facility of the independent breweries that were absorbed into the Pittsburgh Brewing Company in 1899 and the Independent Brewing Company in 1900. The plant continued operating through Prohibition by producing near-beer, ice cream and cold storage. Its Italianate design represents the industrial building style of the mid to late nineteenth century.