In 1926, Pittsburgh left a fruit merchant with a roughly six-foot-wide lot, and he responded by constructing a three-story commercial building

In 1926, Pittsburgh fruit merchant Louis Hendel turned an awkward remnant of downtown land into one of the city’s notable commercial buildings. The property, left behind after Diamond Street, now Forbes Avenue, was widened in 1903, measured roughly 6 feet by 80 feet. The result was the Hendel Building, also known as the Skinny Building, which was designed to occupy this entire six-foot-wide lot along its eighty-foot length. The fruit merchant’s decision to build the commercial building followed years of disputes over his open-air business and sidewalk congestion.

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