WP-Steel in 2004 © Uwe Niggemeier
The Republic Steel company just fired up it’s new electric arc furnace in Loraine, Ohio. It replaces two blast furnaces and a BOF steel making shop idled five years ago.
Blast furnace No. 3 has a hearth diameter of 8,68 meters, furnace No 4 is 8,83 meters wide.
The BOF shop was built in 1971 and it contains two 220 ton vessels.
Inside the helmstand of the 44inch blooming mill at the Republic Steel company in Cleveland, USA, after 1968. Left to right: The stationary steam engineer, the roller, the manipulator.
Demolition started at the former RG Steel plant in Warren,OH that was purchased by the Hilco company in May. This deal required to market the hot mill for three months before beginning to raze the plant. Those three months expired at the end of August.
Founded in 1912 as the Trumbull Steel Co., the mill has a long history in steel production. In 1928, the company merged with Republic Iron and Steel Co. and, two years later, was renamed Republic Steel Corp. Another merger changed its name to LTV Steel Co. when it combined with J&L Steel Corp. in 1984. The company became Warren Consolidated Industries, Inc. in 1988.
WCI Steel employed 2,600 people, and had an annual steel capacity of 1.5 million tons. In 2008 WCI was taken over by the Russian steel company Severstal.
Three years later Severstal sold the plant to RG Steel who filed bancruptcy in 2012.
The Warren Blast Furnace once was the largest worldwide.
A few images from 2007.
80 years ago Mexican Artist Diego Rivera finished his famous murals of the Ford River Rouge plant at the Detroit Institute of Arts were they are still to be seen.
© Chris Dunker (Dunker Imaging)
was closed down in December 1991 at Geneva Steel in Utah. The end of an era for a nation that, in 1970, still produced nearly 40% of it’s raw steel out of open hearth furnaces.
The Geneva OH-shop contained ten 340 ton furnaces first tapped in 1944 and upgraded in between 1957 and 1964.
They were replaced by two 225 ton Q-BOF vessels originally installed at Republic Steel’s (later LTV Steel) South Chicago works in 1991.
For an unknown reason the Geneva Steel company, the successor of U.S. Steel, left the open hearth shop standing until they finally went bancrupt in 2002 and the mill was dismantled in 2004.
Large portions of the mill (caster, plate and strip rolling mill) were sold to Chinese steel maker Qindago Steel.
In 2004 Chris Dunker was allowed to document the demolition of the mill with his camera.
Part of the work can be seen in his book: “Dismantling Geneva Steel”.
The least thing one would expect more than 2000 miles west of the rustbelt and just 50 miles out of Hollywood is a fully integrated steel mill.
But it was there, built in 1942 by Henry J. Kaiser on a former hog farm and ,mostly ,dismantled in the late 1980ies.
In the early 1940ies Kaiser Industries were in search for a steel plate supply for their nearby Richmond shipyards where more than 700 vessels, mostly “Liberty Ships” were built during WWII.
In 1942 ground was broken in Fontana and by 1943 a coking plant, one blast furnace (“Big Bess”) with a capacity of 1200 tons/d and an open hearth shop were under fire.
A 148″ plate mill was added in 1943 and the 86″ hot strip mill started in 1950.
In it’s heyday the mill ran four blast furnaces(hearth diameter 8,7 -8,9 meter) and installed the second BOF steel making shop in the U.S. as early as 1955.
In the 1960ies the location 50 miles away from the coast (imposed by the U.S. Army) at the so called “Inland Empire” became an increasing problem with all raw materials having to be hauled in by rail.
In a last attempt to make the plant competitive a new BOF shop and a continuous caster were built in 1978 to be closed down for good already in October 1983.
Kaiser Steel filed bancruptcy and the plate and hot strip rolling mills were taken over by California Steel Industries in 1984, supplied with slabs from overseas.
The plate mill was sold to the Oregon Steel Company in 1989 and abandoned in 1994.The 86″ hot strip mill is still active.
The remaining iron and steel making facilities were occasionally used by nearby Hollywood studios as a film set (Terminator2) and later dismantled.
The BOF shop was bought by the Capital Iron & Steel Co and shipped to China in 1993.
The ground is now overbuild by a car race track.
Nice historical feature.
The Carnegie Steel Ohio works on the banks of the Mahoning River around 1910.
This mill became part of U.S. Steel later and was closed in 1979.
Starting with the “Black Monday” in September 1977, the closure of Youngstown Sheet And Tube, the once thriving valley of steel was gutted within just one decade.
A recommendable book telling the story of this decline is John Russo’s “Steeltown U.S.A. – Work And Memory In Youngstown” published by the University Press Of Kansas.
The blast furnaces No.1&2 at Wheeling Pittsburgh’s former Steubenville North plant will be chopped down by an implosion demolition in June.
Furnace No.1 was built by the La Belle Iron Works in 1901. It was in operation until May 2005 when it was the oldest active blast furnace in the U.S. . It has a hearth diameter of 7,5 meters and a working volume of 1050 m³.
The No.2 furnace was built in 1904 and idled earlier.
The image was done in April 2004.
