Old Steel: Bethlehem | The Center for Land Use Interpretation

Bethlehem Steel’s hometown plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, closed in the late 1990s.

One of the great monuments to the industry, it is much more than just a shuttered and abandoned mill.

The site is a combination of erasure, obsolescence, redevelopment, celebration, spectacle, farce, and possibility.

The first blast furnace opened here in 1863, and production of rails for the railroad propelled the industry.

Over the following 130 years the plant produced steel for many American landmarks.

In the age of ships, the company was also the nation’s largest military contractor, making cannons, warships, and other arms.

Its plant occupied 20% of the land in Bethlehem and employed more that 30,000 people at its peak.

The company headquarters building was next to the plant.

The building is now empty of people, and filled with mold.

On the hill above town, the company’s once secretive Research Center has been given to Lehigh University.

The former executive showpiece, a function room atop a tower with a view over the millworks and town below, is now part of Lee Iacocca Hall.

Of the 1,800 acres covered by the plant, 1,600 acres has been torn down and redeveloped into the Gateway Commerce Center.

This was where the coke works and finishing sheds were located, east of the old blast furnaces.

The area was remediated under a permissive state brownfield law, and is being turned into an office park and intermodal center.

Some related industries continue to operate in the region, like Lehigh Heavy Forge, now independent from Bethlehem Steel, and making castings for defense projects.

The remaining 200 acres covers the core of the old plant between downtown and the river.

The former main gates of the plant are barely noticed, next to a parking lot.

The former Bessemer steel building is vacant, but protected by fencing.

Other buildings have not fared so well.

Some new buildings have been built in a style that evokes the old mill buildings.

The Stock House, one of the oldest remaining buildings, has been given to the city, which has turned it into a visitor center full of public restrooms.

The building is at the new Steel Stacks historical/cultural area developed at the base of five old blast furnaces that were preserved.

People are not permitted inside the blast furnace area – it is merely a backdrop.

At the Stacks is a pavilion for events and performances, preserved parts of the plant, and other park-like ornaments.

The space is part of the campus of the Arts Quest Center, a cultural organization that programs the site.

Part of the redevelopment here includes a new home for the local public television affiliate.

There is talk of turning the old elevated plant railway into a High Line-like space.

The future of the site is in the hands of the Sands Corporation of Las Vegas, which bought most of it in 2004, promising to spend $600 million in improvements.

The casino opened in a new building at the plant site in 2009, and has been tremendously successful financially.

Hotel construction stalled, but it finally opened in 2011.

The Sands seems to have stopped demolishing buildings, but is uncommitted to historical preservation.

One building that has been protected is the planned future home of the National Museum of Industrial History.

The museum was part of the original plan for preserving the site, established by Bethlehem Steel before the company went bankrupt in 2002.

It is an affiliate museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

Though it does not exist yet as a visitable museum.

Collections for the future museum include many industrial relics from the plant, some on loan from the Smithsonian’s collections.

Most of the collection is stored unrestored in another building owned by the Sands.

The staff consists primarily of two people working out of an old bank building.

There are hopes that the museum might even expand into the other impressive and unusued buildings nearby, owned by the Sands.

If this were to happen, the museum could really match its ambition, and reach the scale that its name implies: The National Museum of Industrial History

In Coatesville, Pennsylvania, another former Bethlehem Steel holding has developed a historical and interpretive initiative.

The National Iron and Steel Heritage Museum is based out of the former Lukens Steel Company headquarters.

Lukens Steel is the nation’s oldest continuously operating steel maker.

It was bought by Bethlehem Steel in 1997 and so is part of ArcelorMittal.

The plant is still functioning in and around the town of Coatesville.

It primarily makes specialty steel plate of a type used in battleships and submarines.

The National Iron and Steel Heritage Museum site is adjacent to part of the plant.

It is in ongoing negotiations with ArcelorMittal to take over one of the unused plant buildings next to the former headquarters.

Also on the grounds of the old headquarters building are some historic homes belonging to the founders and directors of the company.

The grounds abound with Park Service style canted interpretive plaques.

There are some unusual artifacts outside destined for display in the future museum.

In the meantime, the former headquarters building houses some artifacts and displays, though in a more formal environment.

For the most part, the steel industry is remarkably uninterpreted.

This former Bethlehem Steel plant in Steelton, Pennsylvania, along the Susquehanna south of Harrisburg, was the first large-scale integrated steel complex in America.

It was established in 1866 by the Pennsylvania Steel Company, and is one of only three plants in North America that still produce railroad rail - the same product that the plant was built for nearly 150 years ago.

Now owned by ArcelorMittal, there are no efforts either by the company or in the town to acknowledge its historic significance. It just makes rail.

Sparrows Point is one of the largest and most modern integrated steel plants in the country.

Located in Baltimore’s outer harbor, it is the only Old Steel plant on the Atlantic Coast.

It was established by Pennsylvania Steel in 1887 for access to iron ore from Cuba and South America.

Like the historic mill in Steelton, Sparrows Point was bought from Pennsylvania Steel by the expanding Bethlehem Steel in 1916.

Sparrows Point employed 12,000 people at its peak, and produced hundreds of ships at its shipyard.

The plant was modernized with new basic oxygen furnaces in the 1980s and new galvanizing lines in 1993.

A new $325 million cold sheet mill opened in 2000, the year before Bethlehem went bankrupt.

For a while the old shipyard was used to scrap steel ships, perhaps even some made at this very shipyard.

Sparrows Point has changed hands several times, owned by ArcelorMittal, Severstal, RG Steel, and even Ira Rennert’s Renco Group.

Its current owners, Hilco Trading and Environmental Liability Transfer, paid $72.5 million for the 3,000 acre site in early September, 2012.

They are currently accepting offers for all or parts of the plant.

Failing that, they will start auctioning it off in January, 2013.