The Growth of Westinghouse Electric - in pictures

On January 8, 1886, the Westinghouse Electric Company was founded.

Three years later, WEC moved into a building in downtown Pittsburgh along Garrison Alley and the Allegheny River.

As shown on the maps that follow below, the building’s previous tenant was another Westinghouse company, Union Switch and Signal, which had moved into the building a decade earlier.

Switch & Signal had outgrown the space and moved to a new factory that was built in Swissvale. Rapid growth was a characteristic of Westinghouse companies, as was re-using existing facilities for a new company.

Here’s a plat map of the site from 1882.

Here’s the same site in 1890

And in 1903

But the Garrison Alley facilty was quikly outgrown. The East Pittsburgh works of Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company took root in 1897 along the Turtle Creek Valley, a mile downstream from the Westinghouse Air Brake plant in Wilmerding.

Westinghouse Electric workers waiting for the train outside the plant in East Pittsburgh in 1907.