Category: History || By

Something a little bit lighter today, yes?

While looking through the Library of Congress' online archive of photos from the Office of War Information, I found the above photo by Arthur Rothstein, labeled "Industrial development along Monongahela River, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." It was taken in 1938. (Click the photo to enlarge it.)

By the way, the "Library of Congress" is more government out-of-control spending. Why is the government making a power grab for America's history? Surely our history should be sold to the free market, undoubtedly at a lower cost than the Library of Congress, which is probably an invention of socialists like Nancy Pelosi.

Whoops! Sorry, for a minute there, I thought I was writing a letter to the editor of the Daily News.

Anyway, to this former son of Liberty, that sure looks like the Clairton Works, circa mid-1940s, with Liberty and Lincoln boroughs on the hillside in the distance:

If it's Clairton, then that's the coke-making portion of the plant at the center, with the steelmaking portion in the lower left foreground.

The coke works is obviously still operating, although U.S. Steel in 2009 announced that a plan to pour more than $1 billion in improvements into the facility is on hold.

As best as I can tell, steelmaking in Clairton ended in the mid-1960s. I found an article from the Youngstown Vindicator saying the hot end of the plant of the plant was ordered "permanently closed" in 1962, and another story from the Post-Gazette saying that a blast furnace was being reactivated in 1964.

Finally, if you read the Post-Gazette's recent series on pollution and cancer risks in the region --- including in Clairton --- you have to be wondering what was pouring out of those smokestacks back in 1938. Ah, the good old days!

. . .

P.S.: I seem to have overlooked a great blog called Olio, written by a former Clairton resident whose pen name is "Dr. Forgot." Not all of the posts are about the history of the City of Churches, but many of them are. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

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