Old Steel: Buffalo | The Center for Land Use Interpretation

The Lackawanna Steel Plant was once one of the world’s largest, with 20,000 employees in the 1940s.

The plant opened in 1902, and closed in 1982.

It is a landscape of piles of different kinds of post-industrial earth and partially demolished ruins.

It officially became a Superfund site in 1988 and a Brownfield in 2003.

One of the principal tenants is Buffalo Crushed Stone, which grinds up concrete and sorts aggregate at the site.

The Gateway Trade Center is the redevelopment company working with the Port of Buffalo to develop the site.

The Gateway Trade Center company is owned by Buffalo Crushed Stone.

The windmills at the site represent the transition from energy consumer, to energy producer.

The windmills, installed in 2007, generate 25 megawatts, enough for 6,000 homes (the same number of workers that lost their jobs when the plant closed).

The coke battery, often the dirtiest part of an integrated steel mill, is the principal ruin left on site.

The old company headquarters was built in 1901, before the plant opened.

Inside were offices, a library, billiard room, and a private suite with a bathtub. It is slated to be torn down.

A former Republic Steel finishing plant remains closed nearby.

Some scrap metal shredding takes place there.

Ford still makes car parts nearby.

Most of the other steel mills around town have been torn down completely.

Though their soils linger.

A local museum and historical collection has been active since 1984.

The museum is located in a former steel company administration building in the inner harbor.

The Steel Plant Museum is open three days a week.

It shares the space with a regional heritage organization and a railway history group.

Inside are displays and relics, principally from the Lackawanna Plant, the largest in the region, which was bought by Bethlehem Steel in 1922.

The museum hopes to renovate and occupy a much larger currently abandoned building next door.

There are plans to develop the site into a large heritage center and park.

In the meantime the museum is a modest and poignant reliquary for Old Steel.