STEEL TOWN ROOTS,
HAND-POURED BEER

Mike Kowalski and Tony Reyes spent fifteen years together as ironworkers, welding the skeletons of Pittsburgh's skyline. When the mills slowed and the layoffs came, they didn't look for another crew—they looked for a building.

They found this one: a 1948 machine shop in the Strip District, still wearing its riveted steel trusses and the original crane rail from the welding-shop days. The place had been empty for a decade, but Mike and Tony saw the bones. They spent six months tearing out drywall, sanding concrete, and learning to brew.

The bar top? That's the story they tell best. Mike dragged in a scrap I-beam from a demo job on the North Side. Tony cut it to length, welded two more pieces together, and they spent a weekend grinding the welds smooth. A local woodworker milled a slab of reclaimed oak and bolted it on top. That's where you'll sit when you come in.

They named it Foundry Row because that's what this neighborhood was—a row of foundries and forges that built the bridges and buildings you see every day. Now they're building something else. Same steel, different craft.