Overview
As you travel across the bridge to enter into the town of Homestead, twelve smokestacks from the Homestead Steel Works greet you. When you turn right you enter the “Waterfront” – the location of movie theatre, hotels, shops, restaurants, and housing. Now booming with shoppers, this used to be the site of a large steel works plant. In addition to the smokestacks, a gantry crane still stands nearby. Further along down the road one will find the Pump House, a focal point of the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892.
Remnants of the steel past are not found just in Homestead, but all throughout the Pittsburgh region. In the city of Pittsburgh the name “Carnegie,” is unfamiliar to no one. Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon who helped make Pittsburgh the steel capital of the world, is still attached to Pittsburgh through his donations that created music halls, libraries, and museums that stand to this day.
However, the region is not the steel capital of the world anymore yet it is still referred to as “The Steel City.” The question is – why and why do these remnants still remain? Why does the crane and pump house still stand at the Waterfront and why are the smokestacks illuminated at night? Furthermore, what is the purpose of holding on to the steel past?
This unit is about the rise of the steel industry in the nineteenth century Pittsburgh area and the workers who helped Pittsburgh become the steel capital of the world. In addition, the unit also focuses on the demise of the steel industry during the latter half of the twentieth century and the impact of deindustrialization among the area’s steel workers. Moreover, the unit is about using the tools of public history practice to study these topics and for the students to create a public history project.
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