Heat Treat Today publishes twelve print magazines a year and included in each is a letter from the editor, Bethany Leone. In this installment, which first appeared in the February 2025 Air & Atmosphere Heat Treating print edition, Bethany looks at preservation planning on a brownfield through the eyes of a historian and asks the question, “Is it possible an old system can, with modifications, give heat treat operations added value that a newer system cannot?
Feel free to contact Bethany at bethany@heattreattoday.com if you have a question or comment.
Some readers may know my background is in historical research. In 2022, I found myself supporting a Pittsburgh architect as his team worked on preservation planning on a brownfield: The Carrie Blast Furnaces. Was Carrie a girlfriend? That’s one answer. I never got a good story on that, though.
Among existent structures at the site are the power house, the no. 6 cast house, a dust catcher, a blowing engine house, and two remaining blast furnaces, no. 6 and no. 7. Rusted, massive, and with evidence of guerrilla art everywhere, the “abandoned” site was never really forgotten by the locals who fought to preserve its legacy in the region.
The Carrie Blast Furnaces site is located in the midst of what was a key iron producing region with plants all around the city of Pittsburgh, Western Pennsylvania, parts of West Virginia, and Eastern Ohio. The Pittsburgh district was the largest iron and steel producing region in the world between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This industrial site supported U.S. pre-World War II integrated iron production along the Monongahela River. Andrew Carnegie integrated the Homestead Steel Works operations in 1898, the extensive industry marked by tangled railways to transport materials to plants across the landscape.
Various acquisitions and expansions to the space had made it a critical workhorse in America’s manufacturing, eventually becoming a part of U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works. Yet after the world wars, the demand for steel plummeted. Steel manufacturing was consolidated at other locations. Foreign imports increased. Alternative materials were adopted for domestic products. Blast furnaces no. 6 and no. 7, built in 1906–1907, ceased operations in 1978; the rest of the site closed in 1984.
Today, Rivers of Steel operates the brownfield. Straddling both Swissvale and Rankin communities, the site has gone under preservation efforts so it can offer the public historic site tours, arts events, hands on education, and outdoor events. But while the technologies can no longer be used on the site, the remaining structures may still yield value to the community.
From an historic preservation perspective, architectural redesign plans intend to keep as many of the structures as is safe and functional for current and future use. Some of the obvious challenges that exist in brownfields are visible to the naked eye: How to insulate or redesign a blowing engine house building and what suppliers are able to fix and replace the broken windows? Can the dust blower have an alternative purpose or is it a hazard to keep on a site that hosts public events? These are relatively simple issues as compared to the subterranean challenges — toxins leaking from latent pipes is the big one. Paired with environmental preservation efforts of redeeming the landscape for safe public use and recreation, making an industrial brownfield something suitable for long-term public benefit requires a host of planning — and unplanning.
Yet the past investments infused into building Carrie Blast Furnaces give value to the future projects, tangible, and intangible.
The conversation about abandoning older air/atmosphere furnace systems reminds me of this lesson. Is it possible an old system can, with modifications, give heat treat operations added value that a newer system cannot? What with improved furnace insulation, and especially with even advancing furnace monitoring and even technology that leverages carbon emissions within an operation, perhaps certain heat treat operations can create something better and more efficient, leveraging existing investments.
As is the case in historic preservation, an investment can’t always be salvaged or even remembered. We don’t just think about past values or present concerns but future value. I would think the same must be the case for heat treat operations. In navigating the demands of the present economic realities and standards, preparations for the future, while honoring the legacy of workers (and, perhaps, investments) that made it possible is tricky.
Currently, activity at Carrie Blast Furnaces is focused on rebuilding sluiceways for visitors and converting the blowing engine house into a visitor’s center. Hopefully, debate will continue about the rehabilitation investments to come. When it comes to heat treat operations, may we also have great debate in wrestling with old, not so-sexy technologies and whether to adapt or adopt new ones.
Managing Editor
Heat Treat Today
Contact Bethany at bethany@heattreattoday.com.
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