Portraits of Place

The Carrie Furnaces, still standing along the Mon river. They are a relic of the Carnagie Steel era, and were the site of the standoff between the newly forming workers unions and the company, when the pinkerton security forces were called in to break up the strike by force. Latest news is that the furnaces will be preserved in some form for a heritage site and development, certainly a positive thing, the once massive Homestead mills that used to be across the river from the Carrie Furnaces are now the site of a home depot.

The massive blast furnaces at Bethelehem still remain today, and the plan is to preserve them in an industrial history museum, which will include rennovations to parts of the remaining building on the site. The #2 Machine Shop will house the exhibition part of the museum.

While walking around the Bethelehem Steel site, I am constantly aware of the layers of access that were in place when the plant was in operation, the company was divided in a multitude of shops for the different trades represented, and you weren\’t allowed to visit other areas of the plant unless it was part of your job to do so. Many of the workers spent their entire lives working in one area of the plant but did not see other areas. Its strange to wander the abandoned site now, transgressing all these old invisible boundries, and to wade through the spaces that were so heavily stratified with union and personal heirarchy.