The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Pictured in today’s post is the U.S. Steel’s Clairton Works, a gigantic industrial plant whose design and mission involves the transformation of coal into coke. The coke they process here fires the furnaces at other USS plants, notably the Edgar Thompson Steel Mill a few miles west of here.

Fleets of tugboats and railroads carry raw coal here (which does have the appearance of having been pre-processed, particle size wise, I’d offfer), where it’s them cooked in anoxic ovens which produces the coke. Or at least, that’s how I understand how their process works, as I’m still largely ignorant on the subject.

You can read about Coke, and its relatively short industrial history, at this Wikipedia page.

The Clairton Works is the largest manufacturer of Coke in the United States. The history of the plant and the town it is located in are wound up in each other, and this Wikipedia page offers a cogent history which I’d just be referring to over and over so – click here for the overview/scoop.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One had parked the Mobile Oppression Platform on the other side of the river, at a lot offered by the Montour Trail outfit, and then walked across the Clairton-Glassport Bridge to the north bank of the Monongahela River for these points of view. I had to shoot through tightly spaced fencing for some of the shots, which is a pain in the butt.

On this shoreline, several large properties were in the business of storing and sorting coal that had been brought using maritime barges. Stout pierage and docks were observed on both sides of the river, which also had impressive concrete bulkheads installed along their water facing edges. I’m sure that I was popping up on security cameras within the plant, and that were I to have crossed some imaginary property line I’d get to meet the local gendarmes.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The owners of the plant, U.S. Steel, offer this overview document on their website – which describes the purpose, challenges, and environmental control systems of their operation – you can check that out here.

The economic engine of this part of the country used to revolve around this industry, and in many ways it was the industrial heart of the United States during most of the 20th century. Steel from Pittsburgh allowed Manhattan’s skyline to rise, Detroit to build automobiles, and the Navy was able to replace the Pacific fleet lost at Pearl Harbor due to the efforts of the workers at these plants.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A humble narrator is – of course – quite new to all of this steel stuff. The scale of things are positively cyclopean, dwarfing anything you’d encounter back in NYC or Northwestern New Jersey. The confluence of massive amounts of rail and maritime activity, everything about Clairton is amazingly large and it’s difficult to conceive of the scale of an operation this big even when you’re staring right at it.

There were about a dozen large material handlers, like the one pictured above, at work when I arrived but it must have been time for a shift change as their operators were all piling into pickup trucks and leaving their rigs behind while I was up there on that bridge.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This is the view of the Clairton-Glassport Bridge which I walked over, looking back towards the south side of the river, and a residential section of the city of Clairton. The span is about a half mile long, and lined with an unfortunately small chain link fence. As I mentioned yesterday that it is virtually impossible to get a clean shot through this type of fencing.

I imagine that’s by design. I’ve had experience with this type of fence back in NYC at Sunnyside Yards, and it’s a real pickle to get a shot through. The larger chain link fencing, with a more conventional two inch diamond is a pain in the neck too, but the smaller one is nightmarish for photographers. There were a few surveyor holes cut into it here and there, but they didn’t offer salubrious view points.

I used my phone, whose lens is tiny enough to somewhat ignore the fencing, to record a couple of short videos from up on the bridge – check them out here and here.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As a newcomer to Pittsburgh, I still haven’t discovered the points of view which the natives enjoy. I’m constantly looking at other people’s photos and videos, and trying to scry where they were shot from. The site linked to above is Fort Frick Photography, and I’m a fan.

Again, back in NYC at my beloved Newtown Creek, long experience created an absolute glossary of these POV spots. Climb this, walk there, stand on that – that sort of thing.

I’m still finding those things here, and my occasional encounters with other photo people have included conversation about visual access to the various points of interest around Pittsburgh. I didnt grow up here, so it’s all new to me, and I’m unsure of ‘the rules,’ or where it’s ‘kosher’ to shoot from. You have to worry about teenagers, cops, malign creatures of the street – all that. I’m never so vulnerable as when I’m on foot and using the tripod. Static target.

Back next week with something else, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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