Pennsalt Historic District

Built from 1850 along the north bank of the Allegheny River in Harrison Township, the Pennsalt Historic District is an 8.5-acre area of company housing put up by the Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company. Its 62 buildings, holding 153 residential units, form eight blocks of detached houses and rowhouses on flat land between the river and a steep hillside. The earliest group is sixteen one-and-a-half-story frame cottages on the west side of Federal Street, completed in the fall of 1850 with steep gable roofs and board-and-batten sheathing. Later brick rowhouses on Blue Ridge Avenue, Wood, Center and Penn Streets followed. The company's chemical works, which operated from 1850 until 1957, lay adjacent to the northeast. The district is regarded as an early, cohesive example of a western Pennsylvania company town, and its housing reflects the company's paternalistic approach to its workers.