Museum Studies Intern at Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area - Fall 2016
This past summer, I worked at Rivers of Steel, in Homestead curating an online exhibit called Little Steel. The exhibit documented the lesser-known steel mills in Pittsburgh and the Western Pennsylvania region. When one thinks of Pittsburgh steel, one thinks of companies like Carnegie Steel, US Steel, and Jones & Laughlin. However, there were over four hundred medium-sized and small mills that operated in Western Pennsylvania. These smaller mills competed with the bigger companies by producing high-quality specialty products. Despite the success of some of the smaller mills, US Steel bought many of them at the turn of the twentieth century. I looked through boxes of postcards, archival photographs, ephemera from the steel mills to decide what to include. Moreover, I took advantage of the numerous records digitized and freely available through Google books and Historic Pittsburgh database to find information on the small steel mills. The picture included here is one of the advertisements I found. Looking through old maps and city directories on Historic Pittsburgh, it was interesting to see all the urban redevelopment, especially in the Strip District, and the North Side, both of which were major areas of industry in the first half of the twentieth century. When one visits these parts of the city, one can sometimes see some remnants of industry. Throughout the course of my research, I discovered several previously-unknown steel mills. All in all, I wrote biographies for about fifteen steel mills and accumulated over one hundred photographs and advertisements. As more books like steel industry records become available in the public domain, researchers will be further able to discover and write about the previously-overlooked steel mills that played a vital part in Pittsburgh’s steel industry.