Carrie Furnace, part 1
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Rivers of Steel organization has been mentioned here before, in the context of a boat tour which they conducted on the Monongahela River which I had attended. Newtown Pentacle offered three posts about what was observed while onboard the boat – here are – part 1, part 2, part 3 of what I saw on that stormy day. Another one of the interesting programming offers found on the group’s website was a ‘photo safari.’ I bought a ticket for that one, and drove the Mobile Oppression Platform – as I call the Toyota – over to the community of Swissvale, PA., where the somewhat skeletal remains of the ‘Carrie Furnace’ steel mill still stands.
This facility was part of the U.S. Steel Homestead Steel Works, which was formerly occupied both sides of the Monongahela River in this area. The plant was built in 1881, and bought by Andrew Carnegie in 1883. Carnegie Steel soon operated what would become the largest steel mill in all the world here. Homestead was fed raw materials from hundreds if not thousands of miles away, coming to it from every direction, and carried by private railways and fleets of steamships. In 1901, Carnegie sold his company to JP Morgan’s U.S. Steel combine. By WW2, 15,000 people worked at the Homestead Works. In 1986, Homestead closed down.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Carrie Furnace was a blast furnace, which is something I wish I could offer you a long winded explanation of. Thing is, this topic is way outside of my personal or prior experiences. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years getting to understand how petroleum and coal are exploited industrially, back in NYC and specifically at Newtown Creek. I can give a speech on command about how gas is manufactured from coal or low grade oil, the commercially valuable by-products thereof, the pollutants and or toxins left behind by the process. I know precious little about metals manufacturing so no long winded explanation is on offer, just a long winded excuse. Google it, that’s what I’m doing.
Apparently, what’s still standing here on the 135 acre site of Carrie Furnace are the #6 and #7 furnaces, and several of the ‘out buildings.’ There’s also fragments of a rail transportation system hanging about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Upon arriving at the site, and there were probably about 20-25 other people with DSLR’s and fancy camera bags, the Rivers of Steel peeps asked us to sign waivers, and we were then handed hard hats. A guide from the group walked us through the places we would be allowed to go. There’s several spots in the buildings which are not stable, which the guide pointed out to us. Yellow chains were hung here and there, or yellow caution tape, which indicated ‘no go’ zones. Our guide walked us through and around the site as an introduction, and then she said ‘see you in a few hours’ and disappeared.
All of the shots in today’s post were captured during that introduction interval. Handheld snap shots, basically.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator has seen amazing things. A submarine’s nose being barged down the East River, while passing under Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve seen Cargo Ports and countless bridges, the Staten Island Ferry in dry dock, been onboard military ships, and even rode on a freight train, I’ve been inside/under/and all around the largest sewer plant in NYC and have also looked down into the drain that most of Manhattan’s toilet flush’s goes to. I’ve been inside the Manhattan Bridge, walked the Second Avenue Subway tunnel, and watched the Kosciuszcko Bridge be dissected and then blown up.
I seen some shit, but I ain’t never seen nothing like a steel plant, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We ended up in what seemed to be the main antechamber of Carrie, which was one level up from the ground. Everywhere you looked, there were flights of steel stairs and walkways. Pipes and conduits were absolutely flying all over the place. Rust was omnipresent.
The entire complex of relict machinery was functionally open to the environment. Freight rail was occasionally heard passing nearby, carrying raw material to the still functioning Edgar Thomson ‘Mon Valley Works’ steel mill which is probably about a mile/mile and a half away in Braddock. When you didn’t hear the rumble and clickity clack of passing rail, it was mainly birdsong and the chorus of insectivorous activity you’d associate with a riverfront meadow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was the last handheld shot for the day. After this, I set the camera up in tripod mode and got busy. I didn’t do the lens filters thing at all, as it wasn’t required.
The shot above was from more or less at the core of the place, and the machinery at the left side is part of one of the actual furnaces.
Back tomorrow.
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Pittsburgh 3 ways
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wamma lamma ding dong, I almost cannot wait to show all of you the posts scheduled for next week here at Newtown Pentacle, which detail one of the cooler experiences I’ve had so far, here in Pittsburgh. For this Friday post, however, it’s just three shots of the pretty city of Pittsburgh with its always dynamic atmosphere boiling in the sky.
Weather is very different here than it was back in NYC, which I’ve found myself starting to refer to as ‘back home’ or ‘the old neighborhood.’ I suppose that was inevitable.
It’s a volatile atmosphere that you’ll encounter here in Pittsburgh, due to the river valleys and the foot hills of the Appalachia Range’s interactions with the sky vault. A couple of weeks ago it was 89 degrees at 4 in the afternoon and then 54 degrees at midnight. You can leave the house in a driving rainstorm and by the time you get where you’re going, it’s blue sky and sunny – all in the space of 20 minutes. The sky’s gyrations aren’t muted by the presence of an ocean, here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We’ve been pretty lucky so far, weather wise. We moved out here during the high winter. Pittsburgh’s winters have a ferocious reputation, but as it turns out the 22/23 winter season here was the warmest and least snowy winter that this City has experienced in decades. That’s called a soft landing, lords and ladies. I fear we won’t get that sort of lucky again, given that this is an El Niño year.
Those dynamic skies, though. Lately, I find myself exposing the shots with the sky in mind. I’m of the belief that Pittsburgh’s iconic ‘Empire State Building’ or ‘Golden Gate Bridge’ is the sky itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next week is going to be fairly hardcore, with six image posts returning for an interval. I got to go somewhere that I found visually exciting, and under circumstance where I could ‘do my thing’ without any real interruption for multiple hours. Set up the tripod, compose shots, the whole shebang. Thereby…
…back next week, with what I saw when I got to visit Carrie Furnace.
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All wet on the Ohio River, part 2
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few more shots from a boat tour of the Ohio River here in Pittsburgh, offered by the Doors Open Pittsburgh organization, which were captured during a driving rain storm. As is always the case with such things, pretty much the minute that the boat we were on returned to dock, the clouds parted and it became sunny and lovely, but while we were onboard it was absolutely pissing down. Difficult photography weather, as the rain was accompanied by a precipitating mist.
That’s Brunot’s Island pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A strait of water separates Brunot from its neighbor – Neville Island – which is a lot larger and is ‘mixed use’ with heavy industrial activity at one end with a residential community found on the other. I drove over to Neville Island a while back to take a lookie loo at what’s there. It’s on my list for ‘interesting places’ which I intend on learning more about and waving the camera at in the future.
To my eye, that’s a former concrete plant, pictured above, nestled in amongst the trees.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, the rain began to let up a bit as we were returning to the dock, but I dig the shot above for some reason. It’s got a moodiness to it that reminds me of adolescence. Wish I could tell you we did something exciting after debarking the boat, but friends from NYC were meant to be visiting us during the following week, so Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself did some food shopping and then went back to HQ to straighten up the joint and get it ‘guest ready.’
Back tomorrow.
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All wet on the Ohio River, part 1
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself attended another rainy day boat tour recently, one which proceeded down the Ohio River. It was teeming, unfortunately, but that’s the gamble you make when you buy a boat ticket in advance of the date. This one was offered by the Doors Open Pittsburgh outfit. It proceeded from a dock on the Monongahela River and headed over to the Ohio River, where a circumnavigation of one of the largish islands found in Pittsburgh was accomplished.
We’ve experienced a weird couple of weeks in Pittsburgh. Our next door neighbors suffered a pretty involved house fire, one which saw a massive response by local firefighters who saved the building but not before some pretty major damage occurred. This really freaked us out, I should mention. Horrible stuff. Nobody got hurt, thankfully, but seeing somebody’s entire life go up in smoke was a pretty awful and unsettling experience. In a separate storyline, we got an up close look at the Opioid Epidemic in this region which was… it was wild.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the boat we were riding on, there were a small and soggy band of camera wielders which I soon found myself a part of. We were all compressed into a spot which offered some shelter from the rain. It was difficult to keep the lens clean, but there you go.
From what I could discern of the narration, over the sound of the rain itself hitting the river, the facility pictured above is some sort of wastewater plant.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the more intriguing places here on the Ohio River is called Brunot’s Island. It’s private property, and owned by an electrical transmission outfit, and thereby unavailable to public inspection. There used to be an automobile racetrack there, I’m told. I’m also informed that bird watchers and nature enthusiasts will sometimes kayak to and landfall/trespass on its privately owned shorelines during the summer months.
More tomorrow.
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Objectively, a fountainhead
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mental construct I’ve been building, in pursuance of understanding the Pittsburgh region, uses the fountain pictured above as the titular center of the metro region. This is ‘sorta kinda’ true, given the Point State Park’s proximity to the corporate and governmental sections of ‘Downtown.’ The Steelers stadium is across the river, which is where the actual beating heart of the City of Pittsburgh is found. Most of the transit in the region has its first or last stop somewhere within a half mile of this fountain, so…
A friend who’s a multi decade resident of Pittsburgh once described the macro layout of the region to me as ‘spokes and wheels,’ an analogy which I’ve found fairly accurate. It seems that the part of Pittsburgh surrounding this fountain is the ‘master cylinder’ for those other geographically distributed wheels.
I recently read an interesting history of this area which describes the spot where that fountain is found as once having been the site of an exposition hall which hosted what would now be called a ‘World’s Fair.’ The rest of the site’s history was what you’d expect hereabouts – rail yards and steel mills, essentially.
Developing an geospatial awareness is still something I’m still working on. I’ll often stand in a spot, pointing my fingers in various directions while saying “East, North, etc.” and then when I check my phone for verification of my ideations, discover that I’m hopelessly and wildly wrong. I’ll get there, I suppose.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fountain was my ‘turn around point’ on this particular walk, wherein the journey back to HQ starts. Downtown Pittsburgh is weird. It reminds one of Batman’s Gotham City, but that could just be me transposing, as they actually did shoot parts of the Christian Bale Dark Knight movies here. Most of the buildings in the larger metro region spread out horizontally, on enormous plots and sport campuses that are fenced in by parking lots. Downtown is a bit more of a skyscraper situation, with lots of corporate and government buildings crowded into the triangular river delta, forcing the density up vertically rather than spreading it horizontally.
Pittsburgh doesn’t use a grid system for its streets, mainly due to terrain and the industrial past. Having grown up in a grid based city, this means I’m often confused by its long arcing roads and dead ending ‘No Outlet’ cul-de-sacs. To be fair, though, it doesn’t take much to confuse me these days. I’m old, and scared of teenagers. I think a wolf might have been following me, too, or at least a large Pomeranian.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The scene above amused the heck out of me. One thing I’ve been trying to do, here in a more genteel section of these United States, is to curb my Brooklyn potty mouth. My natural speech pattern is South Eastern Brooklyn based, meaning I use ‘effin’ as an adjectival modifier intuitively. If I was writing assembly instructions for a piece of furniture in my native idiom it would go something like “get that a-hole into place, then use that d-bag wrench over there and ‘effin turn the c-sucker until it stops. Don’t be a D and force it, ya s-bagging s-head dumb-a.”
I’ve consciously moved over to using ‘heck’ and ‘darn’ as a crutch, and have been washing my mouth out with soap when needed.
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The Newtown Pentacle 