INTHEKNOW
Fort Pitt Brewing Company
BY MELANIE LINN GUTOWSKI
“FORT PITT, THAT’S IT!”
Generations of Pittsburghers remember
this familiar tagline of the Fort Pitt Brewing
Company. For roughly 50 years, the
company brewed and bottled its products in
Sharpsburg.
The company was founded in 1906
by Samuel J. Grenet, a former State
Representative, and Dr. Herman Hechelman,
a surgeon and native of Bavaria, Germany,
whose father and uncle had previously owned
a brewing business in Pittsburgh. They
constructed a five-story brewing complex
at Sixteenth Street and Marys Avenue in
Sharpsburg, with the first consumer-ready
products available in 1908.
During the Prohibition years, Fort
Pitt survived by peddling non-alcoholic
cereal beverages, dubbed “lager brews”
to differentiate them from beers. After
Prohibition’s repeal in 1933, the company
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began its years of greatest success. The
Sharpsburg complex was expanded to include
an art deco-style office building and bottling
plant, complete with glass block windows
spelling out “FORT PITT THAT’S IT,” in
addition to the brewery and stockhouse.
The brand was known for helping to
popularize canned beer in the 1940s, with its
innovative “Crowntainer,” a bottle-shaped can
topped with a metal cap.
By 1949, Fort Pitt became the largest
brewery in Pennsylvania, with sales of over
1.7 million barrels of beer. The company
brewed not only Fort Pitt Beer and Fort Pitt
Ale, but other brands it had purchased, such
as Old Shay.
Grenet, longtime manager and chairman of
the company, died in 1935 and his successor,
Michael Berardino, died in 1957. Just a few
months later, Fort Pitt closed and was sold,
citing declining sales, increased competition
from national brands, and the lingering effects
of a brewery workers strike in 1952.
Today, Fort Pitt’s office building and
bottling plant remain standing and are
privately owned, but the rest of the company’s
structures were razed in 1961.
In 2014, entrepreneur Mark Dudash
resurrected the Fort Pitt brand and created
an updated recipe for Fort Pitt Ale catering to
today’s tastes. Fort Pitt is “it” once again. ■
Melanie Linn Gutowski is a historian and the
author of “Pittsburgh’s Mansions.”
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