Homestead Steel Works Site, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh’s Homestead Steel Works, once the flagship of the Carnegie Steel Company, has been turned into a shopping center. The steel works which once employed 15,000 people closed in 1986 after more than a century of operation. The plant was demolished and the land was turned into the Waterfront Shopping Center, which opened in 1999. Some pieces of the old plant were preserved on site, including a row of tall brick smokestacks, a gantry crane, and the old pump house and water tank, now part of a small park. The park was the location of the famous Battle of Homestead, a major labor dispute in 1892, where several workers were killed in a confrontation with Pinkerton guards. Next to the park is a research center for U.S. Steel, the only large remaining American steel company, and the company that took over Carnegie’s operations in 1901.