 The history of the Mount St. Peter parish is woven with the history of Alcoa and the emergence of New Kensington as an industrial city in the early twentieth century . In 1890 , the Burrell Improvement Company considered the advantages of the level land south of its home in Lower Burrell . They named the area New Kensington , surveyed it , and laid out avenues , running parallel to the Allegheny River , and numbered streets running perpendicular to the river . Fourth and Fifth streets were the primary commercial streets . Once the land was surveyed and plotted , the company opened the land to bidding . The first large company to purchase land , the Pittsburgh Reduction Company , acquired a 3 @.@ 5 @-@ acre ( 14 @,@ 000 m2 ) property by the riverfront . Other companies also acquired sites for commercial and industrial development : Adams Drilling , Goldsmith and <unk> , New Kensington Milling , New Kensington Brewing , Logan Lumber , and Keystone Dairy , to name a few . 
