Steel Stacks
by Beth Ferris Sale
Title
Steel Stacks
Artist
Beth Ferris Sale
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
I explored and photographed the Bethlehem, PA Steel district and the ruins which have been preserved in time and turned into a beautiful cultural arts campus. The steel blast furnaces were mammoth in size, rich in color, texture and history. They took my breath away.
"Bethlehem has a distinctive colonial history as a pioneering Moravian community, and a secure place in northeastern Pennsylvania's anthracite industry, but its celebrity as "the arsenal of America" and its vital importance for the American steel industry centers on the saga of Bethlehem Steel. For more than a century Bethlehem was a microcosm for the nation's steel industry.
Beginning in the 1870s, Bethlehem's steel was made into rails, battleships, factories, skyscrapers, and more.
The company amassed an impressive track record of technical innovation, and owing to the leadership of Charles M. Schwab it grew into the nation's second largest steel producer in the 1920s.
Unfortunately, Bethlehem also mirrored steel's decline. From the 1970s the company struggled with outmoded production technology, high labor costs, and stiff international competition. Steelmaking in Bethlehem, after nearly a century and a quarter, ended on November 18, 1995.
Bethlehem Iron, founded in 1861, became a steel company when it built the nation's tenth Bessemer steel rail mill a dozen years later. John Fritz, inventor of the industry-standard three-high rail mill while he was at Cambria, helped perfect the making of Bessemer steel rails at Bethlehem but he recognized that the company's rail mill could not compete economically against Andrew Carnegie's cost-busting Pittsburgh complex.
Broadside Advertising Ephemera to demonstrate the Nickel Steel Plate.
After the death of railroad man Asa Packer, who had tightly controlled the company for years, and its subsequent purchase by entrepreneur Joseph Wharton, Fritz got his chance in 1885. He built Bethlehem into the "arsenal of America" by importing special heavy-forging equipment from England and France and entering the lucrative market for battleship armor.
Bethlehem commanded tonnage prices for its armor roughly ten times those for steel rails. The company also began making oversize gun barrels for battleships and coastal fortifications. marker Frederick Taylor, the controversial "scientific management" guru, invented his landmark high-speed tool steel in Bethlehem's heavy gun shop. The company's renowned "Beth Forge" division grew directly from these roots. It hammered 70 tons of steel into the 45-foot-long axle for George Ferris's revolving wheel installed at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The Panama Canal's 110-foot-high lock gates also came from Bethlehem.
Uploaded
August 18th, 2015
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