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.