1749
Rise of Steel
Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson Map the Pittsburgh Coal Seam
Joshua Fry — briefly George Washington's commanding officer in the Virginia militia — and Peter Jefferson, father of the future president, prepare the first known map of northern Appalachian coal. Their survey documents that the land yet to be named Pittsburgh rests atop a thick seam of bituminous coal created 300 million years earlier. By 1760 a mine on Coal Hill — later named Mount Washington — is already supplying fuel to the garrison at Fort Pitt.
For more: page 16
1794
Rise of Steel
The Whiskey Rebellion
Farmers in northern Appalachia distill rye into whiskey — the only product they can profitably transport to coastal markets. When Congress passes a federal duty on distilled alcohol in 1791, violent opposition erupts just south of Pittsburgh. President Washington and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton personally lead federal forces into the region in 1794. The uprising fades quickly.
For more: page 16
1804
Rise of Steel
First Iron Foundry; First Cotton Mill
Joseph McClurg opens Pittsburgh's first iron foundry along the Monongahela River. The same year, Peter Eltonhead of Manchester, England opens the city's first cotton mill. By 1850 seven cotton mills operate in Pittsburgh — one of the region's largest industries. But Pittsburgh's enduring competitive advantage lies with iron. By the 1850s, more than 113 different owners of rolling mills operate in the Pittsburgh region.
For more: page 18
1811
Rise of Steel
Pittsburgh's First Rolling Mill; Steamboat Boom Begins
Englishman Christopher Cowan builds the region's first rolling mill in 1811, transforming raw metal into more usable forms. In the same year Pittsburgh shipyards begin constructing steam-powered vessels — fulfilling Benjamin Franklin's 1770 prediction that Fort Pitt would become a shipbuilding center for an inland empire. Between 1811 and 1835, Pittsburgh shipyards construct at least 196 steam-powered vessels. The Ohio River becomes an early superhighway for westward expansion, and Pittsburgh sits at the hub of it all. Energy-intensive iron and glass production follows almost spontaneously, catalyzed by unparalleled coal supplies and river transportation.
For more: page 18
1853
Rise of Steel
Jones & Lauth Founded — Pittsburgh's First Integrated Ironworks
The Jones & Lauth Company establishes its ironworks along the Monongahela River in 1853 — less than three miles from Fort Pitt. In 1861 the firm expands to include a blast furnace and foundry, making it the city's first integrated ironworks. The company evolves into Jones & Laughlin Steel, which operates on Pittsburgh's riverbanks for over a century.
For more: page 18
1858
Rise of Steel
Puddlers Form the Sons of Vulcan
Puddlers — the iron workers whose rare combination of extraordinary strength and tacit knowledge makes them indispensable in converting molten pig iron to wrought iron — organize in Pittsburgh to form the Sons of Vulcan, immediately one of the most powerful US labor unions. Puddlers earn more than almost any other 19th-century industrial worker.
For more: page 20
1859
Rise of Steel
Clinton Furnace Proves Connellsville Coke Works in Blast Furnaces
The Clinton Furnace at the base of Coal Hill proves that coal from the nearby Connellsville field can be used in blast furnaces to smelt iron ore. The low sulfur content of Connellsville coke makes it the ideal metallurgical coal — even better than other seams of the Pittsburgh coal bed. By 1880 over 82 percent of all coking coal in the United States comes from western Pennsylvania.
For more: page 19
1859
Rise of Steel
Drake Well and Pittsburgh as the World's Oil Refining Capital
When Edwin Drake spuds the first commercial oil well in Venango County in 1859, Pittsburgh — the largest nearby city — becomes the center of finance and commerce for the new industry. By 1867 fifty-eight local oil refineries operate in Pittsburgh, making it the world's largest refining center. The oil-generated wealth finances a young Andrew Carnegie and fuels the investment capital that later underwrites steel. Pittsburgh's oil era is brief — pipeline geography soon shifts refining to coastal cities — but the financial networks it creates persist into the future.
For more: page 203
1873
Rise of Steel
Carnegie Builds Edgar Thomson Steel Works
Andrew Carnegie hires the leading steel engineer of the era to design a Bessemer-process steel facility at Braddock, named after Pennsylvania Railroad president J. Edgar Thomson. The Bessemer converter transforms steel from artisan craft to industrial commodity. By 1891, Carnegie Steel controls operations in Braddock, Homestead, and Duquesne.
For more: page 22
1878
Rise of Steel
Murrysville Natural Gas Discovery
On November 3, 1878, brothers Michael and Obediah Haymaker accidentally discover natural gas twenty miles east of Pittsburgh near Murrysville, when their bore reaches a gas-rich layer of sand at 1,400 feet. The modern natural gas industry traces its roots to this moment. The shallow gas boom of the 1880s fuels Pittsburgh industry and George Westinghouse builds a distribution network that transforms the regional energy economy.
For more: page 204
1881
Rise of Steel
Carnegie Partners with Frick; Homestead Works Acquired
Carnegie joins forces with coal magnate Henry Clay Frick, securing control of the Connellsville coking coal fields. Carnegie had already acquired the Homestead Steelworks in 1879 for $350,000; a reformed and modernized version of the plant is completed and begins full production in 1889. Carnegie acquires the new plant in Duquesne the same year. By 1894 a remarkable 43 percent of the nation's steel ingots come from the Pittsburgh region. Carnegie Steel in 1900 trails only Standard Oil as the most profitable company in the United States.
For more: page 22
1885
Rise of Steel
Westinghouse Electric Founded
George Westinghouse, who had already transformed the regional natural gas business, founds Westinghouse Electric in Pittsburgh.
For more: page 24
1888
Rise of Steel
Alcoa Founded in Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Reduction Company — later Alcoa — is formed in Pittsburgh in 1888 by A. W. Mellon and Captain Alfred Hunt, central to the creation of the modern aluminum industry. By the late 1880s Pittsburgh simultaneously concentrates iron, steel, aluminum, glass, oil, and electrical manufacturing — a density of industrial output the book calls unmatched anywhere in the world at the time. Pittsburgh's original oil exchange has evolved into the Pittsburgh Coal Exchange and then the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange.
For more: page 24
1892
Rise of Steel
Carnegie Secures Mesabi Iron Ore with Rockefeller
After exhausting nearby iron ore supplies, Carnegie partners with John D. Rockefeller — considered the richest individual in US history — not just to acquire a single mine but to contract for the output of the entire Mesabi Range in Minnesota. Carnegie minimizes costs by shipping ore via lake steamers to a Carnegie-owned port at Conneaut, Ohio, and then by rail to his Mon Valley plants. The move cements vertical integration from ore to finished steel and locks in the competitive advantages that will make Carnegie Steel the most profitable company in America by 1900.
For more: page 24
1892
Rise of Steel
The Homestead Strike
With Carnegie Steel's contract with the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers set to expire June 30, 1892, chairman Henry Clay Frick proposes a 22 percent wage cut. Carnegie — in Scotland for his annual vacation, effectively unreachable — privately endorses Frick's strategy to break the union entirely. On June 29, Frick locks out all 3,800 workers and seals the mill behind a twelve-foot barbed wire fence three miles long that workers call "Fort Frick." On July 6, three hundred Pinkerton detectives arrive by barge on the Monongahela River before dawn. Strikers are waiting. A fourteen-hour gun battle leaves approximately twelve people dead. The Pinkertons surrender and are beaten by the crowd. Governor Pattison sends 8,500 National Guard troops, enabling Frick to reopen the mill with strikebreakers. In late July, the anarchist Alexander Berkman — unaffiliated with the union — shoots and stabs Frick in an assassination attempt. Frick survives, and public sympathy shifts against the strikers. By November the Amalgamated Association collapses entirely. The defeat effectively ends meaningful union representation in American steel for nearly forty years, until the formation of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in the late 1930s.
For more: page 22
1900
Rise of Steel
Charles Schwab's Dinner Speech — the Deal Is Set in Motion
On December 12, 1900, at a private University Club dinner in New York, Carnegie Steel president Charles Schwab delivers a speech on the advantages of further consolidating the steel industry through vertical integration and economies of scale. A half-hour conversation with J. P. Morgan follows dinner. Morgan solicits through Schwab the price of buying Carnegie out whole. Carnegie returns a note with a single figure; Morgan accepts immediately. The final deal is announced less than eighty days later — less than $100 million below what Morgan said he would have paid. The "unexpected consequences" of the deal, as one account puts it, have "vibrated through every decade" since.
For more: page 15
1901
Peak & Power
J. P. Morgan Creates U.S. Steel — Largest Corporation in History
After a private dinner speech by Carnegie Steel president Charles Schwab in December 1900, J. Pierpont Morgan pays Carnegie $480 million — the largest corporate merger in US history. Carnegie's personal payout exceeds $225 million. U.S. Steel is born as a new form of business enterprise: a holding company encompassing the entire vertical supply chain from iron ore to finished product. The corporation controls an extraordinary concentration of production centered on southwestern Pennsylvania. It was the deal whose "unexpected consequences vibrated through every decade" to follow.
For more: page 16
1906
Peak & Power
U.S. Steel Opens Gary Works
Construction begins in March 1906 on a massive new integrated steelworks on the shore of Lake Michigan in Indiana — so large that a city must be built alongside it, named for U.S. Steel chairman Elbert H. Gary. The site is chosen precisely for what Pittsburgh lacks: direct access to Great Lakes water transportation for iron ore from Minnesota. The first ore boat arrives July 23, 1908; the first heat of steel is tapped in early 1909. By 1913 Gary Works operates eight blast furnaces, thirty-eight open-hearth furnaces, and 560 coke ovens. For much of the twentieth century it is the world's largest steel mill. Pittsburgh collectively frets — and by 1911 U.S. Steel president Farrell arrives to reassure the city it has nothing to worry about.
For more: page 30
1907
Peak & Power
U.S. Steel Hosts "Gary Dinners" — Cementing Industry Control
Following a national recession triggered by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and financial panic, U.S. Steel chairman Elbert Gary hosts a series of private dinners for major steel executives. The meetings fix prices and divide markets — openly anticompetitive goals Gary does not apologize for. They continue until 1911, when they are institutionalized by the formation of the American Iron and Steel Institute. The Taft administration files an antitrust suit in October 1911 under the Sherman Act, but after years of litigation, the Supreme Court sides with U.S. Steel in 1920 by a four-to-three vote.
For more: page 28
1907
Peak & Power
Gulf Oil Incorporated in Pittsburgh
The discovery of oil at Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas — partly financed by Andrew Mellon — returns sizable profits, leading to the 1907 incorporation of Gulf Oil in Pittsburgh. From its earliest days Gulf pioneers the application of advanced scientific methods to oil exploration, building one of the nation's largest corporate research staffs in suburban Pittsburgh by the 1930s. For thirty-eight years the iconic forty-four-story Gulf Building is the tallest skyscraper in the city. Gulf's acquisition by Standard Oil of California in 1984 and immediate departure to southern California is among the most damaging single corporate events of Pittsburgh's 1980s collapse.
For more: page 220
1911
Peak & Power
US Steel President Farrell Visits Pittsburgh
In 1911, the newly appointed president of U.S. Steel, James A. Farrell, visits Pittsburgh to reassure the city that its position in the iron and steel trade as "the center and leader of the world is so solidly assured that claims of rivals passing her in importance are not to be considered seriously." Farrell argues that Pittsburgh "can afford to be indifferent to the natural rivalry of other places." The same year the Pittsburgh Industrial Commission is created to market the city to investors, spending $136,000 over three years to secure new industries. The visit and the commission both reflect the same underlying anxiety the words are meant to suppress. Editorial cartoon, 1911 (Pittsburgh Sun-Gazette)
For more: page 30
1924
Peak & Power
FTC Orders End of "Pittsburgh Plus" Pricing
On July 21, 1924, the Federal Trade Commission issues a cease-and-desist order to U.S. Steel, ending the notorious "Pittsburgh Plus" basing-point pricing system. Under this scheme, all steel in the nation — regardless of where it was produced — was priced as if it had shipped from Pittsburgh, effectively taxing the entire US economy to subsidize Mon Valley mills. The FTC ruling arrives after more than a decade of legal battles. U.S. Steel immediately appeals. Only in 1948 does the Supreme Court conclusively void the appeal in FTC vs. Cement Institute.
For more: page 27
1927
Peak & Power
U.S. Steel Finally Establishes a Research Laboratory
The industry trade journal Iron Age critically observes in 1927 that U.S. Steel, by far the nation's largest industrial corporation, only just established a formal research laboratory. Meanwhile Gulf Oil has already built one of the nation's largest corporate research staffs in Pittsburgh, and Westinghouse creates a dedicated research division in 1906, moving to a major suburban campus in 1916. U.S. Steel's late investment in research is a telling indicator of the corporation's confidence that pricing power — not innovation — is its competitive strategy.
For more: page 32
1929
Peak & Power
Great Depression
October 29, 1929 — Wall Street's Black Tuesday precipitates a national depression that freezes the nation's industrial geography in place. The steel industry's geographic center had been drifting westward an average of six miles per year since first measured in 1874, when it resided in Juniata County, Pennsylvania. By 1933 the center has moved past Pittsburgh into western Ohio. The Depression briefly reverses this drift — the industry retreats toward Pittsburgh's existing infrastructure — but the underlying competitive decline is only deferred, not reversed. The artificial stabilization will end the moment the economy recovers, leaving Pittsburgh more exposed than ever.
For more: page 34
1929
Peak & Power
Consolidation Referendum Fails — Regional Fragmentation Locked In
A 1929 referendum comes closest to merging all municipalities within Allegheny County into a single government. Results document overwhelming public support — but the proposal fails solely because of legislative maneuvering in Harrisburg. The failure locks in the fragmented structure of over 700 local governments across the Pittsburgh metropolitan area that the book identifies as a persistent barrier to regional economic coordination for the rest of the century. No subsequent consolidation attempt comes close to succeeding.
For more: page 244
1935
Peak & Power
University of Pittsburgh Warns Pittsburgh Has "Passed Its Peak"
The Bureau of Business Research at the University of Pittsburgh concludes that the city has already "passed through its period of mushroom growth in which it could never make a mistake." The steel industry's geographic center had been moving westward six miles per year since first measured in 1874. By 1933 that center has passed Pittsburgh and moved into western Ohio. The Great Depression briefly reverses the drift — industry retreats toward Pittsburgh's existing infrastructure — but the underlying competitive decline is now documented and ignored.
For more: page 34
1938
Peak & Power
Irvin Works — The Last New Steel Plant Near Pittsburgh Built
In December 1938, U.S. Steel opens its new Irvin Works in West Mifflin, adjacent to its Duquesne Works. It is one of the last entirely new steel plants constructed in Pittsburgh. In the same year, U.S. Steel announces a $60 million improvement to Pittsburgh-area plants. Jones & Laughlin completes a new continuous strip mill. But capital expenditure on existing Pittsburgh plants is already falling relative to national trends. The last fully integrated steelworks built anywhere near Pittsburgh — Midland Works of Crucible Steel, thirty-six miles down the Ohio River — was constructed in 1911.
For more: page 34
1941
Arsenal
Homestead Works Expansion — the Largest Wartime Enlargement of a Steel Plant in the Nation
Navy Secretary Frank Knox designates U.S. Steel's Homestead Works as the primary facility to supply the Navy's Speed Up Program, essential to ramping up shipbuilding production. An $86.2 million Defense Plant Corporation contract, matched with $75 million from Carnegie-Illinois Steel, funds eleven new open-hearth furnaces completed in 1943. The expansion requires the displacement of nearly 8,000 residents: 1,566 families are uprooted as 121 acres of residential Homestead are taken over for construction. Demolished are 1,363 buildings, twelve churches, five schools, and two convents. In August 1941, the federal government raises an additional $117 million for investment across the Mon Valley. Collectively, the wartime expansion at Braddock, Duquesne, and Homestead is equivalent to the rapid construction of an entirely new integrated steelworks.
For more: page 47
1942
Arsenal
World War II: Pittsburgh Becomes a World Shipbuilding Center
Workers lay the keel for LST-1 at Dravo Corporation's Neville Island shipyard in July 1942 — just seven months after Pearl Harbor. The Dravo and American Bridge shipyards together produce over 40 percent of all 650 LSTs commissioned between 1942 and 1945, plus destroyer escorts, minesweepers, and hundreds of smaller watercraft. By 1945 Pittsburgh is one of the most prolific shipbuilding centers in the world. During the war, Pittsburgh-area blast furnaces produce 95 million tons of steel — nearly all needed for wartime mobilization.
For more: page 38
1943
Arsenal
The Allegheny Conference Forms — Pittsburgh Prepares for Peacetime
Banker Richard King Mellon forms the Allegheny Conference on Postwar Community Planning, specifically to address the economic problems Pittsburgh faces once wartime production ends. In September 1944 it warns that Pittsburgh's postwar planning is falling behind. The Conference soon oversees a dramatic postwar urban transformation — clearing the Point, controlling smoke, rebuilding Downtown. The ACCD and the Chamber of Commerce contracted with the Econometric Institute to sponsor the "Long Range Outlook for Pittsburgh" which presented dire projections for the region's economy. The report is recalled by the Chamber of Commerce the day after delivery in February 1946.
For more: page 56
1944
Arsenal
Defense Plant Corporation Expands Pittsburgh's Steel Production
The Defense Plant Corporation (DPC) invests $9.6 billion nationwide in new industrial capacity between 1941 and 1945. Pittsburgh industry mobilizes at extraordinary scale: manufacturing employment reaches a record 365,000 workers by late 1944 — at least 60 percent above 1929 levels. But most of the nation's entirely new plants built during the war are in distant regions with little prior manufacturing history. Pittsburgh actively lobbies to prevent federal investment in competing new steel capacity. In August 1945, Pittsburgh executives predict the "war-born Western Steel industry" could "topple this district from its steel throne."
For more: page 52
1946
Arsenal
The Econometric Institute Report
A consulting firm led by economist Charles Roos — co-founder of the Econometric Society with Schumpeter and Frisch — delivers "Long Range Outlook for Pittsburgh" to the Chamber of Commerce. The report, finding Pittsburgh's overdependence on steel deeply dangerous, is accepted on February 1, 1946, and then recalled the very next day. The Allegheny Conference receives its copy on February 25; the Chamber demands it back. Only in 1954 — eight years after the original — is the full report released publicly.
For more: page 58
1946
Arsenal
Postwar Steel Strike; Carnegie Steel Bans Married Women
In January 1946, nearly 750,000 steelworkers nationwide go on strike, with regional steelworks left "sprawled lifeless." The following April, 350,000 coal workers join them; 200,000 railroad workers strike by May. Curtailment of coal supplies forces widespread electricity rationing. Workers win significant raises — a boon to industrial Pittsburgh that rapidly ramps civilian demand after years of wartime wage suppression. On June 28, 1946, Carnegie Steel formally bans employment of married women unless they are widows or wives of disabled veterans — a policy that contributes to Pittsburgh's abnormally low rate of female labor force participation for decades to come.
For more: page 53
1947
Arsenal
Renaissance I — Flood Control, Gateway Center, and Smoke Control
In October 1945, Governor Ed Martin approves a comprehensive redevelopment proposal for Downtown Pittsburgh jointly submitted by the Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association and the Allegheny Conference. Work begins on a new thirty-six-acre Point State Park at the head of the Ohio River. A complementary Gateway Center office and retail development transforms the formerly rundown warehouse district. Crucially, the conversion of wartime "Big Inch" oil pipelines to carry natural gas in 1947 makes natural gas cheaper than coal per BTU in Pittsburgh for the first time — providing the economic incentive that at last makes smoke control legislation enforceable.
For more: page 56
1948
Arsenal
Donora Smog Disaster
On the morning of October 26, 1948, an industrial smog settles over the Monongahela Valley town of Donora — twenty-five miles southeast of Downtown Pittsburgh. A concoction of industrial gases and coal smoke is trapped by a temperature inversion for four days. Twenty people die; nearly half the town's population falls ill. The disaster becomes one of the foundational events of the modern environmental movement, a preview of the Clean Air Act debates two decades later. U.S. Steel's chairman, speaking to the Allegheny Conference the same month, does not mention the disaster. Meanwhile, the corporation is already investing in new steel capacity along the Delaware River near Philadelphia.
For more: page 60
1949
Peak & Power
Herbert Simon Hired at Carnegie Tech; GSIA and Computation Center Founded
In 1949, Carnegie Tech hires Herbert Simon — an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology — to help launch a new Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA), funded by a substantial bequest from William Larimer Mellon, founder of the Gulf Corporation. Simon is hired as dean of undergraduate business education, but his impact expands far beyond that role. GSIA is built with an unusual emphasis on research rather than teaching, with dedicated space for a statistical computing lab from its founding. Within a few years Simon creates the school's Computation Center in 1956, initially sharing access to an IBM computer acquired by Mellon Bank the year before. Simon's experimental computing lab grows steadily, leading to Carnegie Tech's 1965 formation of one of the first academic computer science departments in the United States.
For more: page 224
1950
Peak & Power
City of Pittsburgh Population Peaks at 676,000
The city of Pittsburgh reaches its all-time population peak of over 676,000 in 1950.
For more: page 270
1950
Peak & Power
Basing Point Pricing Finally Ends
The FTC's 1924 cease-and-desist order against Pittsburgh Plus pricing had been largely ignored and then appealed for decades. In 1948 the Supreme Court's ruling in FTC vs. Cement Institute finally voids U.S. Steel's appeal, declaring basing point pricing illegal. Even then the industry does not yield: it lobbies for congressional legislation granting a statutory exemption, and Pennsylvania's Senator Francis Myers succeeds in passing a moratorium bill through the Senate. The House declines to schedule hearings, and repeated efforts in the next session also fail. Only at the end of 1950 do legislative efforts to preserve basing point pricing come to a conclusive end — twenty-six years after the original FTC ruling.
For more: page 48
1952
Decline
Peak Steel Employment in the Pittsburgh Region
At the height of the Korean War, manufacturing employment in the four-county Pittsburgh metropolitan region peaks at over 379,000 jobs — likely surpassing even wartime peaks during World War II. Capacity utilization of US steel plants reaches an unsustainable 100.9 percent in 1951.
For more: page 64
1952
Peak & Power
U.S. Steel Opens Fairless Works — New Capacity Built Elsewhere
In April 1951, U.S. Steel chairman Benjamin Fairless breaks ground on a four-thousand-acre integrated steel plant along the Delaware River just outside Philadelphia — providing direct access to ocean trade routes. Named the Fairless Works, it begins output on December 11, 1952. The plant represents new integrated steel capacity invested deliberately outside Pittsburgh, signaling where the corporation sees future competitive advantage: coastal access to iron ore and export markets.
For more: page 62
1952
Peak & Power
J&L Expansion Displaces Pittsburgh's Scotch Bottom Neighborhood
Jones & Laughlin's 1952 expansion of its Hazelwood coking operation requires a thirty-acre addition that displaces more than five hundred families from the "Scotch Bottom" section of Pittsburgh's Hazelwood neighborhood. The homes can only be acquired after the Urban Redevelopment Authority designates the real estate as legally blighted. J&L chairman Ben Moreell — the retired admiral who created the Navy Seabees in World War II — introduces the expansion plan to Pittsburgh City Council in October 1952.
For more: page 62
1952
Peak & Power
Pittsburgh Ringed by Cold War Defenses — A Nuclear Target
In April 1952, operating military forces deploy into the Pittsburgh region for the first time since the Civil War. Two army battalions roll through McKeesport to set up 90-mm antiaircraft guns. A 1957 study concludes that nuclear attacks on Chicago and Pittsburgh could cripple 57 percent of the nation's steelmaking capacity. Nike guided missiles are installed at twelve locations surrounding the city in 1954, upgraded to Nike-Hercules missiles in 1959. Pittsburgh's industrial concentration — its greatest economic asset — is simultaneously its greatest strategic vulnerability in the atomic age.
For more: page 68
1954
Decline
U.S. Steel's UNIVAC — Pittsburgh and the Computer Age
On August 25, 1954, U.S. Steel announces it is taking delivery of a UNIVAC computer at its National Tube Works in McKeesport — the first major commercial installation of a UNIVAC anywhere in the world. With the sole exception of New York City, nowhere in the nation has more commercial UNIVAC installations than Pittsburgh. Westinghouse in the 1950s is the largest customer of Burroughs computers. Carnegie Tech forms one of the first academic computer science departments in 1965.
For more: page 220
1954
Transformation
Shippingport Nuclear Plant — Westinghouse and the Atom
The Atomic Energy Commission selects Duquesne Light Company as the private-sector partner to build and operate the nation's first civilian nuclear power plant, built at Shippingport on the Ohio River just twenty-five miles from Pittsburgh. Westinghouse designs the reactor, launching a nuclear energy industry it manages for five decades. Westinghouse supplies eight reactors to seven countries during the 1960s. But by the mid-1970s, uranium prices jump eightfold, legal battles with utilities cost billions, and the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979 arrests the industry's growth. Westinghouse eventually acquires CBS in 1995 and renames itself a media company.
For more: page 212
1954
Peak & Power
Salk Polio Vaccine
Jonas Salk, recruited to the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine in 1947 as an associate research professor of bacteriology, produces successful field tests of a safe and effective polio vaccine in 1954.
For more: page 223
1955
Peak & Power
Chancellor Litchfield Arrives at Pitt; Research University Ambition Declared
In 1955, the University of Pittsburgh hires Cornell business school dean Edward Litchfield with a mandate to make Pitt "one of the world's great universities." His 1957 inaugural address emphasizes research institutes across every school and college. In May 1962 he proposes a massive collaborative research center in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood at an initial cost estimated above $250 million. Operating deficits contribute to his resignation in 1965 — but the ambition reshapes the university's trajectory and establishes the academic research infrastructure that undergirds Pittsburgh's eventual knowledge economy.
For more: page 224
1956
Peak & Power
Pittsburgh Chamber Opposes the Saint Lawrence Seaway
In 1956, the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce issues a 105-page report arguing that the benefits of the Lake Erie–Ohio River Seaway project are not worth pursuing. The report is candid enough to admit that the effects on the Pittsburgh economy "would be potentially hazardous at this time." The Saint Lawrence Seaway, which connected the Great Lakes with the North Atlantic and opened in 1959, gave coastal and Great Lakes steel producers direct access to ocean iron ore trade routes — precisely the competitive advantage the Fairless Works was designed to exploit. Pittsburgh's instinct is to protect its existing position rather than adapt to new trade geography.
For more: page 66
1959
Decline
The 116-Day National Steel Strike —Expansion of Steel Imports
On July 15, 1959, over a half million steelworkers nationwide, including more than 125,000 in Pittsburgh, do not report to work. US steel production shuts down for 116 days. Crucially, foreign steel — especially from Japan and Germany — fills the gap. In 1959, US steel imports exceed exports for the first time in nearly three-quarters of a century. From 1962 onward, steel imports increase every year through the end of the decade. By 1968, over 18 million tons of imported steel account for nearly 17 percent of domestic consumption. The strike inadvertently gives Pittsburgh's competitors a permanent foothold in its own market.
For more: page 76
1961
Decline
Skybus — Pittsburgh's First Attempt to Diversify into New Technology
In December 1961, the ACCD's executive director proposes an automated rapid transit system for Pittsburgh, envisioning a transportation equipment industry as an economic alternative to steel. In June 1963, the Port Authority of Allegheny County partners with Westinghouse on a $5 million Skybus demonstration project — described as the first deliberate attempt to push Pittsburgh's economy away from metals industries. By 1969 a rival conventional rail plan emerges. A 1972 court injunction halts Skybus. Federal funding is repeatedly promised and never delivered. By 1974 Skybus is dead — Pittsburgh's most tangible early effort to commercialize a new technology industry ends in political failure.
For more: page 80
1962
Decline
Proposed Panther Hollow Research Park — "The Valley of Tomorrow"
In May 1962, University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Edward Litchfield proposes a major collaborative research center in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood to be jointly used by Pitt and Carnegie Tech. The challenge is that Oakland is already densely packed. The solution: literally place a roof over much of the mile-long Panther Hollow ravine that separates the two campuses, transforming it into what Time magazine calls "the world's greatest research park." The Oakland Corporation is created to pursue the project. Initial costs are estimated above $250 million — equivalent to nearly $2.6 billion in 2025 — with full buildout projected at $750 million. The "Valley of Tomorrow" is to include a nuclear reactor, a computing center, and a shared data bank for academic and private-sector tenants. Litchfield argues that "scientists need — and insist on — close contact with academic institutions" and that the park will "unite all the research facilities in the Oakland area to help solve Pittsburgh's economic problems." Budget crises, tepid business support, and Litchfield's 1965 resignation defer and ultimately doom the project.
For more: page 225
1963
Decline
Dorothy Six Begins Production
U.S. Steel announces in 1960 a major new investment at its Duquesne Works: Dorothy Six, the world's largest blast furnace, begins production in 1963 — capable of producing over 4,000 tons per day of raw steel. It retains that record barely five years, until Nippon Kokan builds a 6,000-ton furnace in Hiroshima in 1968. In the same year Dorothy Six begins production, the final volumes of the four-year Economic Study of the Pittsburgh Region are published, predicting steel employment will fall from 108,000 in 1960 to 63,000 by 1985.
For more: page 70
1964
Transformation
The Economic Study of the Pittsburgh Region
Between 1960 and 1964, University of Pittsburgh professors Edgar Hoover and Benjamin Chinitz, funded by the Ford Foundation, complete the four-volume Economic Study of the Pittsburgh Region — one of the most comprehensive regional economic analyses ever conducted. It predicts steep steel employment declines, warns that Pittsburgh's competitive advantage is draining away, and argues that talent and quality of life will matter more than geography. Its core conclusion: "People rather than geography will play the largest role in shaping our future." The report is largely ignored.
For more: page 10
1966
Decline
David Lawrence Dies; Pittsburgh Loses Its Civic Architect
Longtime Pittsburgh mayor David Lawrence passes away in January 1966, during his first term as governor of Pennsylvania. R. K. Mellon retires from the PRPA in 1965 and from Mellon Bank in January 1967, before passing away in 1970. Neither leaves a successor commanding similarly dominant roles in their respective spheres.
For more: page 245
1967
Transformation
Carnegie Mellon University Formed
Carnegie Tech and the Mellon Institute merge to form Carnegie Mellon University in 1967. Carnegie Tech had already formed one of the first academic computer science departments in 1965. The University of Pittsburgh offers a master's degree in computer science in 1967. By 1979, Carnegie Mellon establishes its Robotics Institute. The University of Pittsburgh, under Chancellor Edward Litchfield since 1955, recruits Jonas Salk in 1947 and begins an aggressive research expansion. Thomas Starzl, who performed the first successful liver transplantation in 1967, is recruited to Pitt in 1981. The university performs 2,090 primary liver transplants between 1984 and 1990 alone.
For more: page 226
1968
Decline
Congressman Elmer Holland Requests Departmet of Labor Study — "A Static Economic-Area Situation"
In 1968, Congressman Elmer J. Holland — who represents Pittsburgh's South Side, still home to J&L's behemoth steelworks spanning both sides of the Monongahela River — requests the US Department of Labor study the future economic prospects of the Pittsburgh region. Holland, a member of the United Steelworkers of America who had earlier compiled a report for President-elect Kennedy on automation's effects on labor, is looking ahead: he wants to know what Pittsburgh can expect when the Vietnam War ends. The final report, Pittsburgh: A Study of a Static Economic-Area Situation , is remarkably pessimistic. Its central conclusion: the problem is not the basic industry itself but that the region "simply does not have the proper industrial mix to give it the viability of other metropolitan areas." The report also notes the "lack of a scientific community attached to the University of Pittsburgh or any other independent agency or institute which would serve as a magnet for the modern so-called growth industries." The region's sanguine economy makes it almost impossible to hear the warning.
For more: page 83
1969
Decline
Record Steel Production
US steel plants finish producing 141 million tons of raw steel in 1969 — more than any prior year in history. Regional unemployment drops to 2.1 percent in October, among the lowest rates ever recorded. In Darlington, South Carolina, a small company called Nucor opens a minimill using an electric arc furnace — a technology that requires no coke, no blast furnace, and a fraction of the capital investment of integrated mills. Prior to 1970 minimill output is not even counted in national statistics. The 1970 Pittsburgh Press business editor notes simply that steel "spent most of 1969 in the gravy."
For more: page 86
1969
Decline
NUCOR Opens First Steel Minimill
On October 12, 1969, in Darlington, South Carolina, a company with no history in steel opens the nation's newest steel furnace. The Nuclear Corporation of America — reorganized from a bankrupt truck maker — concentrates on its one profitable subsidiary: a small steel fabrication firm. Its electric arc minimill requires no coke, no blast furnace, and a fraction of the capital of integrated mills. Prior to 1970 minimill output is not even counted in national statistics. Nucor builds a second plant in Nebraska in 1972, a third in Texas in 1974.
For more: page 74
1969
Decline
Pittsburgh's Lowest Recorded Metropolitan Unemployment Rate
In October 1969, unemployment across the Pittsburgh metropolitan area drops to 2.1 percent — a rate well below what many economists, before or since, have defined as full employment. It is the lowest recorded metropolitan unemployment rate in the region's history. The reading reflects the confluence of the longest peacetime economic expansion in US history, Vietnam War demand for industrial output, and the steel industry's record production year.
For more: page 86
1970
Decline
Clean Air Act and Environmental Reckoning
The Federal Clean Air Act of 1970 expands federal enforcement authority and coincides with the creation of the EPA on December 2. A new Allegheny County pollution code takes effect January 1. In the first eleven months of 1970, the county issues 533 notices of violation, files 82 criminal complaints, and investigates over 4,600 public complaints. The Clairton Coke Works — the nation's largest coke plant, operational since 1918 — is immediately in violation. U.S. Steel fights regulators for years, spending more on lawyers than on cleanup. By October 1976 it agrees to a $600 million investment at Clairton to address environmental concerns.
For more: page 90
1970
Decline
U.S. Steel Tower Opens
The 64-story U.S. Steel Tower is completed in 1970 and dedicated September 30, 1971, rising 841 feet above Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle — tallest building between New York and Chicago, and still the tallest in Pittsburgh. Construction begins in 1969 — the same year Pittsburgh records its highest-ever steel production and its lowest-ever unemployment rate.
For more: page 82
1973
Decline
Oil Embargo — and Pittsburgh's False Security
In October 1973, Arab nations embargo oil to the US, pushing oil prices up 70 percent. The steel industry signs the Experimental Negotiating Agreement (ENA) with the United Steelworkers — workers surrender the right to strike in exchange for guaranteed wage increases. Between 1970 and 1980 steelworkers' real wages increase 37 percent. In 1973, US steel capacity operates at a nearly unsustainable 97 percent — the highest since the Korean War. Total US steel production jumps 14 percent to a record 151 million tons.
For more: page 86
1973
Decline
Experimental Negotiating Agreement — Workers Trade the Strike for Guaranteed Wages
In 1973, ten major steel producers and the United Steelworkers of America sign the Experimental Negotiating Agreement. Workers surrender the right to strike in exchange for guaranteed cost-of-living adjustments and a 3 percent annual wage increase. The ENA is renewed in 1977. Between 1970 and 1980, steelworkers' inflation-adjusted wages rise 37 percent. The agreement insulates Pittsburgh workers from the economic turbulence of the 1970s while leaving the industry with no mechanism to adjust labor costs as global competitiveness erodes — a structural rigidity that compounds the crisis of the early 1980s.
For more: page 88
1976
Decline
Volkswagen Chooses Pennsylvania
On May 31, 1976, Volkswagen announces it has selected New Stanton, Pennsylvania — forty miles east of Pittsburgh — for the first US assembly plant by a foreign automaker since Rolls-Royce left Massachusetts in 1929. Pennsylvania wins a bidding war with Ohio by offering a $40 million low-interest loan (principal payments deferred until 1998), plus training, railroad upgrades, and other subsidies totaling $90 million. The plant employs more than 6,000 workers at its peak. Governor Shapp declares Pennsylvania has "pulled a big rabbit out of the hat." The plant closes in July 1988, laying off 2,450 workers.
For more: page 96
1976
Decline
U.S. Steel Plans New Steel Plant on Lake Erie
In 1976, U.S. Steel begins planning a new $3 billion integrated plant on Lake Erie at the Pennsylvania-Ohio border — the equivalent of nearly $17 billion in 2025. Conneaut would provide direct access to Great Lakes iron ore shipping, the competitive advantage Pittsburgh's inland mills lacked. The Army Corps of Engineers issues a permit in June 1979. Within months, the Federal Reserve's anti-inflation shock collapses the economic justification. The project is cancelled — the last major attempt to modernize Pittsburgh-area steel production at a scale competitive with coastal and foreign mills.
For more: page 94
1977
Decline
Youngstown's "Black Monday"
On September 19, 1977, the Lykes Corporation announces the shutdown of the Campbell Works in Youngstown, Ohio — instantly leaving five thousand workers unemployed, with no advance notice as required by no law yet in existence. The closure devastates Youngstown, a community as dependent on steel as Pittsburgh. The event galvanizes a national labor and community organizing movement that eventually spreads to the Mon Valley. Pittsburgh watches, makes symbolic gestures of solidarity, and does not change course. J&L announces in the same year it will close major parts of its Second Avenue Works along the Monongahela.
For more: page 134
1979
Decline
The Federal Reserve's Saturday Night Massacre
On October 6, 1979, the Federal Open Market Committee convenes on a Saturday. Fed chairman Paul Volcker announces a dramatic shift in monetary policy — deliberately contracting the money supply to kill double-digit inflation. The prime rate eventually reaches an all-time peak of 21.5 percent in December 1980. Mortgage rates exceed 18 percent. Construction collapses, which collapses steel demand. In the fourth quarter of 1979, U.S. Steel records a $561.7 million loss — the single worst quarterly loss ever recorded by a US corporation at that time.
For more: page 102
1979
Decline
Pittsburgh's Renaissance II
A burst of Downtown high-rise construction through the late 1970s and early 1980s — collectively known as Pittsburgh's Renaissance II — reinforces the casual impression that Pittsburgh's economy is strong. New towers including the CNG Tower, Two Chatham Center, and One Mellon Bank Center begin construction between 1977 and 1981. The forty-two-story PPG Place is dedicated in April 1983 — only months after the regional unemployment rate peaks above 18 percent.
For more: page 56
1979
Decline
Three Mile Island — Westinghouse's Nuclear Crisis Deepens
The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg in March 1979 curtails civilian nuclear power expansion across the United States, directly compounding the legal and financial crisis already engulfing Westinghouse. The company had unilaterally declared in September 1975 that it could not fulfill long-term uranium supply contracts, projecting losses of over $2 billion. Lawsuits from affected utilities drag through the courts. The case is settled just before trial in 1981. Three Mile Island then eliminates most remaining domestic demand for new nuclear plants. The combined trauma triggers a corporate metamorphosis: by 1980 Westinghouse acquires Teleprompter, a cable television company, beginning a pivot away from its century-long industrial identity.
For more: page 213
1980
Decline
Pittsburgh Loses 180,000 People
Between 1980 and 1990, the Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area contracts by over 180,000 people — the single greatest population loss of any metropolitan region in the United States that decade. Detroit, nearly twice Pittsburgh's size, loses only half as many. The Pittsburgh region shrinks by 7.4 percent; nearby Wheeling, West Virginia declines over 14 percent. Over 70 percent of net outmigration is people aged 29 or younger — the region loses an estimated 4 percent of its twentysomethings per year at the peak. A 1984 Princeton study concludes Pittsburgh has the second-lowest proportion of single men aged 20 to 24 of any metropolitan area in the nation.
For more: page 147
1980
Decline
Bayh-Dole Act Unlocks University Patent Rights
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, sponsored by Senators Dole and Bayh, allows universities to retain ownership of intellectual property developed through federally funded research — for the first time giving Pittsburgh's heavily research-funded institutions a financial incentive to commercialize their discoveries. Prior to the act, the federal government retained exclusive ownership of virtually all federally funded intellectual property, leaving universities with little incentive to pursue commercial applications. Bayh-Dole provides the legal foundation for the Software Engineering Institute, the Robotics Institute's commercialization, UPMC's technology transfer, and the biotech cluster that follows.
For more: page 228
1981
Decline
U.S. Steel Buys Marathon Oil
On November 19, 1981, U.S. Steel announces plans to purchase Marathon Oil — the nation's seventeenth-largest petroleum company — for $6.2 billion. The corporation had accumulated $2.5 billion in cash and $3 billion in bank credit, totaling $5.5 billion in working capital. Rather than modernizing its Pittsburgh steel operations, it uses the cash to pivot entirely to oil. Just after midnight on January 7, 1982, $3.7 billion in checks are mailed to Marathon shareholders.
For more: page 111
1981
Transformation
Ben Franklin Partnership — Pennsylvania Bets on Technology
In February 1981, the Thornburgh administration proposes the Ben Franklin Partnership Challenge Grant Program — one of the earliest state technology economic development programs in the nation. Pennsylvania appropriates $1 million in fiscal 1982–83. In 1984, Carnegie Mellon receives a $104 million Defense Department contract to start its Software Engineering Institute. Also in 1984, a $3.34 million state grant founds the Advanced Technology Center as a joint CMU-Pitt partnership. But as late as 1989, state funding for the program is slashed, and in 1998 its western PA director is forced out for financial misconduct.
For more: page 228
1981
Transformation
Thomas Starzl Recruited to Pitt; Transplantation Medicine Transforms Pittsburgh Healthcare
Thomas Starzl — who performed the first successful liver transplantation in 1967 at the University of Colorado — is recruited to the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. The university invests $230 million to expand its transplantation program and cancer research center. Starzl's discovery of antirejection therapies catalyzes rapid expansion: between 1984 and 1990 Pitt performs 2,090 primary liver transplants. Revenue from this near-monopoly on early transplantation fuels the hospital consolidations that eventually create UPMC, which would become Pittsburgh's largest employer.
For more: page 230
1982
Decline
18% Unemployment — Pittsburgh's Great Depression
In February 1982, unemployment in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area tops 18 percent as the official count of unemployed workers peaks at over 210,000 — three times the number from just three years earlier. In January, total US steel industry employment drops to 254,000 hourly workers, 45 percent fewer than the 453,000 employed just three years earlier. In March, U.S. Steel's National Tube Works in McKeesport shuts down major operations, laying off 2,400 of 4,800 workers. Beaver County's county seat, Aliquippa, which had dipped to 7.4 percent unemployment in August 1981, records 28 percent — higher than most states during the Great Depression — by January 1983.
For more: page 114
1983
Decline
Strategy 21
In 1984, state representative Tom Murphy — a future mayor of Pittsburgh — coordinates city and county officials to jointly prioritize funding requests to the state. The resulting plan, known as Strategy 21, issues its priority list in 1985. Unlike the ACCD's concurrent strategic report — which was criticized by Carnegie Mellon president Richard Cyert as "basically a flop" — Strategy 21 is co-authored by Mayor Caliguiri and county commissioners, not just business leaders. It produces real results: the state fully funds the new midfield airport terminal and the Southern Beltway connector in its 1986–87 budget.
For more: page 186
1984
Transformation
Weirton Steel — Employee Ownership as Alternative
In 1984, workers collectively take ownership of Weirton Works of National Steel — thirty miles west of Pittsburgh — creating the largest employee-owned manufacturing plant in the United States. The new plant reports a $500 million profit in 1984, $170 million of which goes to employee profit-sharing. The Weirton model in part inspires the Tri-State Conference's years-long campaign to save Dorothy Six and the Duquesne Works. The comparison is instructive: Weirton workers accept a six-year wage freeze in exchange for ownership. Duquesne is structurally different, and the strategy ultimately fails.
For more: page 133
1984
Decline
Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute Receives $104 Million DOD Contract
In 1984, Carnegie Mellon receives a $104 million Department of Defense contract to establish its Software Engineering Institute — one of the largest federal research contracts ever awarded to a university at that time.
For more: page 230
1984
Decline
Gulf Oil Acquired by Chevron and Departs Pittsburgh
In 1984, Standard Oil of California acquires the Gulf Oil Company, forming Chevron, and immediately relocates the combined corporation's headquarters to southern California. The Gulf Building — the iconic forty-four-story skyscraper that was the tallest in Pittsburgh for thirty-eight years — is abandoned quickly, as are the expansive research laboratories Gulf had maintained in suburban Pittsburgh since the 1920s. More than 3,000 Gulf employees had worked at the Downtown headquarters as late as 1981, with an additional 600 at the research complex. By 1986 no sizable Gulf operations remain active in Pittsburgh.
For more: page 116
1985
Decline
"Most Livable City" — The Paradox of Pittsburgh's Rankings
Rand McNally's first Places Rated Almanac ranks Pittsburgh as the most livable metropolitan region in the United States — against all 329 others. The Associated Press asks: "What next? A city known for recession-silenced steel mills, 9.1% unemployment, and labor violence has been named the most livable city?" The ranking's co-author, visiting Pittsburgh to present a key to the city, says bluntly: "The city's decline as a major steel producer is as much responsible for its rating as any other criteria." Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel files for Chapter 11 the same year. In November 1985, seven Mon Valley municipalities create the Steel Valley Authority to fight plant closures using eminent domain.
For more: page 8
1986
Decline
The Fight to Save Dorothy Six
On January 9, 1986, U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers issue a joint press release ending efforts to restart production at Duquesne Works. The Lazard Frères feasibility report concludes definitively: "Reopening Dorothy Six was not financially feasible."
For more: page 138
1986
Decline
U.S. Steel Renames Itself USX
In 1986, the corporation founded by J. P. Morgan in 1901 as United States Steel changes its name to the USX Corporation, formally signaling that steel is no longer its primary identity. The renaming follows the 1982 acquisition of Marathon Oil and reflects a diversified conglomerate whose most profitable operations are now in petroleum, not steel. In 1990, USX formally relocates its headquarters to Houston, Texas. Rebuilding steel production is no longer a primary corporate goal. The communities of the Mon Valley are left with a different calculus entirely.
For more: page 123
1987
Transformation
Remaking Cities Conference
In 1987, the American Institute of Architects sponsors its first Remaking Cities Conference in Downtown Pittsburgh, convening national and international experts to address the region's industrial collapse. The keynote speaker is the Prince of Wales. The conference is held at the David Lawrence Convention Center — a mostly windowless hall that makes no attempt to connect with the Allegheny River just outside. The event crystallizes an emerging national conversation about postindustrial urbanism, establishing Pittsburgh as the defining case study of deindustrialization and its aftermath for planners, architects, and policymakers worldwide.
For more: page 196
1988
Transformation
Braddock Declared Fiscally Distressed — Act 47 State Receivership
In 1988, Pennsylvania declares Braddock's municipal government fiscally distressed and forces it into the Act 47 program — state receivership akin to bankruptcy. Braddock had peaked at over 20,000 residents in the 1920s; by 2023 fewer than 1,700 remain. Carnegie opened the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock in 1875 — the plant that launched his steel empire — and it is still the only steel facility operating along the Monongahela.
For more: page 262
1990
Transformation
UPMC Begins Consolidating Pittsburgh's Healthcare System
In 1990, the Presbyterian-University Health System acquires management control of adjacent Montefiore Hospital. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center begins the consolidation that transforms Pittsburgh's fragmented hospital system into one of the nation's largest health systems. Revenue from Pitt's near-monopoly on early liver transplantation fuels the expansion — 2,090 primary liver transplants between 1984 and 1990 alone. By 2010, combined employment in health and education in Pittsburgh numbers 240,000 workers — nearly three times the 88,000 employed in those sectors during the steel era.
For more: page 231
1990
Transformation
Sony Takes the Volkswagen Site — Smokestack Chasing Continues
In 1990, the Sony Corporation of Japan is enticed to invest in the former Volkswagen plant in New Stanton, Westmoreland County, with $40 million in state incentives. Beginning in 1992, Sony assembles televisions on the site and later expands to include an integrated state-of-the-art production facility. The plant is repeatedly cited as a success of Pennsylvania's industrial recruitment strategy. But employment never approaches the 6,000-worker peak of the Volkswagen era.
For more: page 177
1990
Transformation
Fore Systems Founded by CMU Researchers
Fore Systems, a producer of computer-networking and communications equipment, is formed in 1990 by a group of Carnegie Mellon University researchers. It grows to over a thousand employees at its suburban Pittsburgh headquarters through the decade. The UK General Electric Company acquires Fore for $4.5 billion in 1999.
For more: page 235
1991
Transformation
Pittsburgh Technology Center Opens on Former J&L Site
Construction begins on the Pittsburgh Technology Center — the city's first major brownfield redevelopment — on the former LTV/J&L Second Avenue site. Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh become anchor tenants. It is the first use of Tax Increment Financing in Pittsburgh. The first commercial tenant, Union Switch & Signal (a company founded by Westinghouse in 1881), moves in in 1995 — after receiving $16 million in state incentives not to move to South Carolina. Sixteen years have passed since steel was last produced on the site.
For more: page 188
1992
Transformation
New Airport Terminal Opens — and Becomes a Cautionary Tale
After years of construction and nearly $1.5 billion in public investment, Pittsburgh's new midfield terminal opens in 1992 — hailed as "the single greatest economic generator this area has seen." USAir signs a thirty-year lease for 53 of 76 gates. By 2002, after September 11, US Airways files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It files again in 2004 and 2005. Following mergers with America West in 2005 and American Airlines in 2014, the airline dismantles its Pittsburgh hub. From 2002 through the end of the decade, daily traffic through the airport declines by nearly two-thirds.
For more: page 172
1994
Transformation
Allegheny County Regional Asset District
In 1993, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passes legislation creating a Regional Asset District for Allegheny County. Beginning in 1994, the RAD collects a supplemental 1 percent countywide sales tax, distributing half to cultural institutions and half to local municipal governments. The RAD is one of the few successful examples in the book of regional fiscal cooperation in a governance landscape notorious for its fragmentation — 128 municipalities in Allegheny County alone.
For more: page 249
1995
Transformation
Pittsburgh Becomes the First Large Metropolitan Region to Experience More Deaths Than Births
In 1995, Pittsburgh becomes the first major US metropolitan area where deaths exceed births in a given year — a demographic milestone that signals the depth and persistence of the region's population crisis. The baby boom children born in Pittsburgh's industrial peak are now aging; young workers who might have formed families left in the 1980s. By 2001, the rate at which people are moving into Pittsburgh is ranked second lowest among the twenty-five largest metropolitan areas.
For more: page 160
1997
Transformation
Alcoa Building Becomes Regional Enterprise Tower
In 1997, Alcoa announces plans to move its headquarters from its iconic aluminum-clad Downtown skyscraper to a new building on the north shore of the Allegheny River. CEO Paul O'Neill — a future US Treasury secretary — offers the old building to Pittsburgh's civic leadership as a Regional Resource Center to co-locate the region's many fragmented economic development organizations. SPRPC, renamed the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission in 1998, takes ownership. The building houses SPRPC, the ACCD, and much of Pittsburgh's civic organizational infrastructure — described as a "spider web or a diagram of the internet" of regional cooperation. By 2011, unable to sustain itself on nonprofit tenant revenues, the building is forced into foreclosure.
For more: page 248
1998
Transformation
LTV Hazelwood Coke Works Closes
In 1997, the EPA files notice of violation against LTV for exceeding particulate emissions from the Hazelwood coke works for more than 18,000 of 29,400 operating hours. LTV declares it cannot keep the plant open without a $500 million investment. In 1998, the plant ceases coking operations — just shy of 150 years of nearly continuous industrial activity within the city of Pittsburgh. Sun Energy proposes to rebuild a coke works on the site, obtaining Keystone Opportunity Zone tax abatements — but the Pittsburgh school board vetoes the deal in December 1998. By early 1999 Sun Energy abandons its efforts.
For more: page 178
2002
Transformation
Four Foundations Buy the Former LTV Hazelwood Site
In 2002, the R. K. Mellon Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the McCune Foundation, and the Benedum Foundation jointly purchase the former LTV coke works in Hazelwood — the last major undeveloped brownfield within the city limits, at over 170 acres along the Monongahela riverfront. It is the largest program-related investment in Pittsburgh's history and a significant departure from the public-led brownfield model that had governed earlier redevelopments. The consortium initially names the site Almono. In 2016, Uber constructs a test track for autonomous vehicles on the still-vacant land. Renamed Hazelwood Green, the site eventually hosts university projects in robotics, advanced manufacturing, and life sciences.
For more: page 256
1999
Transformation
The Waterfront Opens on Former Homestead Works
The first tenants begin operations at The Waterfront — a mixed-use retail and residential development on 270 acres of the former Homestead Works — thirteen years after U.S. Steel ended steel production there. The Park Corporation, which purchased the site in 1988, uses tax increment financing to develop a model that includes the Pittsburgh Steelers' training facility and a University of Pittsburgh medical building. Between 1998 and 2000, the vast Homestead Works is emptied of all but a few symbolic artifacts.
For more: page 190
1999
Transformation
Allegheny County Home Rule Charter — Modernizing Governance
In 1999, a county referendum narrowly approves a home rule charter implementing recommendations from the ComPAC 21 reform commission — replacing Allegheny County's three-commissioner board, which had exercised combined executive and legislative power since the 18th century, with a single county executive and a part-time legislative council. The reform is one of several 1990s civic restructuring efforts, alongside the 1995 formation of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance intended to be an umbrella economic development organization.
For more: page 250
1999
Transformation
Seagate Opens Pittsburgh Research Division
In 1999, Seagate — the world's largest producer of computer hard drives — becomes the first of several major national technology firms to open a branch research operation in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon University professor Mark Kryder, an electrical engineer, motivates the decision. The new office occupies a state-of-the-art electronics clean room in a former warehouse on Pittsburgh's South Side — just blocks from the former Jones & Laughlin South Side Works, which private developers have remarketed as a hub for high-technology firms. In 2001, Seagate follows up with a new $40 million research laboratory in the Strip District, adjacent to Downtown Pittsburgh. S
For more: page 238
2001
Transformation
USX Splits into Marathon Oil and U.S. Steel
In 2001, the USX Corporation — which had renamed itself from U.S. Steel in 1986 after acquiring Marathon Oil in 1982 — restructures again. The conglomerate renames itself Marathon Oil, taking on the name of the petroleum company that had become its primary business. Simultaneously, it spins off an entirely new and separate company comprising its remaining steel production assets, naming that spinoff U.S. Steel. The J. P. Morgan corporation founded in 1901 has now completed a full transformation: the steel operations are a spinoff of what is legally an oil company. U.S. Steel, reborn as an independent firm, retains its Pittsburgh headquarters. Marathon Oil continues for twenty-three more years before its acquisition by ConocoPhillips in 2024 closes the last chapter of the original corporate lineage.
For more: page 292
2004
Transformation
Renz Farm — The Marcellus Shale
On October 20, 2004, over a million gallons of water are pumped deep into the ground on quiet farmland twenty miles southwest of Downtown Pittsburgh. Range Resources applies horizontal drilling and slick-water fracking — techniques refined in Texas's Barnett Shale since 1997 — to the Marcellus Shale for the first time. Statewide, just 12 wells are completed in the Marcellus in 2006; by 2009 and 2010 the number exceeds 400 per year. Natural gas employment in Pennsylvania grows 259 percent between 2007 and 2012. Projections anticipate 212,000 new jobs statewide by 2020.
For more: page 198
2005
Transformation
Apple Opens Pittsburgh Office on the CMU Campus
Apple Computer sets up a regional office in Pittsburgh in 2005, housed in a RIDC-managed building on the Carnegie Mellon University campus as part of a new Keystone Innovation Zone. Apple is part of a string of major national technology firms opening Pittsburgh operations through the decade — following Seagate in 1999 and preceding Uber in 2015 — each drawn primarily by CMU's talent pipeline and research base. The pattern of national firms arriving to access Pittsburgh's academic output, rather than to build lasting regional enterprises, becomes a defining characteristic of the city's technology economy.
For more: page 238
2007
Reckoning
Duquesne Closes Its Only High School — The Human Cost Tallied
On May 28, 2007, Pennsylvania's secretary of education announces that the only high school in the Duquesne City School District will not open in the fall. The district, taken over by the state in October 2000, cannot achieve fiscal solvency despite years of state oversight: over 53 percent of resident children live in poverty. USX had promised Duquesne annual payments for seventeen years after the Duquesne Works closed in 1984 to compensate for lost tax revenue — when those payments ran out, the fiscal collapse was inevitable. Duquesne, incorporated in 1891 because of the steelworks, had once counted over 21,000 residents; by 2023 its population is under 5,100.
For more: page 258
2009
Transformation
G20 Summit
Pittsburgh is selected as host for the G20 Summit — chosen explicitly as proof that industrial reinvention is possible. On May 28, 2009, the White House announces Pittsburgh as the site.
For more: page 2
2010
Transformation
University Research Exceeds $1 Billion — "Eds and Meds" Confirmed
In 2010, annual research expenditures at Pittsburgh universities exceed $1 billion for the first time and continue growing through the following decade. Combined health and education employment in the Pittsburgh region reaches 240,000 workers — nearly three times the 88,000 employed in those sectors during the steel era. The same year, regional manufacturing employment falls below 100,000.
For more: page 234
2010
Transformation
Bakery Square Opens — Google Comes to East Liberty
After the Nabisco factory in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood closes permanently in 2004 and the city declares the site blighted in 2006, $1 million in state subsidies and $10 million in tax increment financing backstop a private redevelopment into a mixed-use campus of offices, retail space, and a hotel. The first tenants include the University of Pittsburgh and Google — the firm that came to dominate internet search after Pittsburgh-born Lycos failed to capitalize on its earlier lead. When Google expands its Pittsburgh presence at Bakery Square, it catalyzes population and employment growth that transforms East Liberty — but also displaces many of its longtime residents. Between 2000 and 2023, the neighborhood's concentration of Black residents drops from 68 to 34 percent; among adults aged 25–34, from 68 to 9 percent.
For more: page 237
2015
Reckoning
Uber's Advanced Technology Center — Tech's Arrival, and Departure
In the spring of 2015, Uber hires the bulk of Carnegie Mellon University's autonomous vehicle researchers to establish an Advanced Technology Center in Pittsburgh — the region's most significant private-sector commercialization of academic research to date. Within years, a fleet of driverless Ubers tests in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Innumerable media articles project the emergence of a major autonomous vehicle industry cluster. In 2020, Uber shutters most of its local research operations and sells off its Pittsburgh technology group.
For more: page 285
2019
Reckoning
Shell Ethane Cracker — New Energy, Old Questions
On October 30, 2019, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto announces his opposition to a potential new petrochemical plant in Beaver County — kicking over a "hornet's nest" among the region's business and political class. The debate is over Shell Chemical's ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, the largest industrial investment in western Pennsylvania in a generation, enabled by Marcellus Shale's ethylene feedstock. It echoes old debates about industrial development versus environmental quality. Just days earlier, on October 1, U.S. Steel announces a decision that may presage its exit from carbon-based steel production altogether. The past and future argue in the same week.
For more: page 287
2023
Reckoning
Nippon Steel Acquires U.S. Steel — After a Year of Political Battle
In December 2023, Japan's Nippon Steel — the world's fourth-largest steelmaker — announces a $14.9 billion agreement to acquire U.S. Steel, promising to retain Pittsburgh as headquarters.
For more: page 292
2024
Reckoning
Marathon Oil Acquired — U.S. Steel's Corporate Lineage Ends
On November 22, 2024, ConocoPhillips announces it has completed the acquisition of Ohio-based Marathon Oil — the company whose CUSIP identifier reveals it was formerly U.S. Steel, the vast corporation founded by J. P. Morgan in 1901. U.S. Steel had purchased Marathon Oil in 1982, renamed the combined company USX in 1986, moved its headquarters to Houston, and in 2001 spun off its remaining steel assets into a separate company taking the Marathon Oil name again.
For more: page 111