Where two passions meet.

The legendary US underground band Pere Ubu from Cleveland, Ohio was one of the first to address the atmosphere of their declining heavy industrial homeland in lyrics and on record covers.

From now demolished Pershing Av. bridge.
No. 1 slabbing mill in the foreground, no. 2 BOF right, open hearth shop in the background.

Frontman and mastermind David Thomas on growing up in Cleveland in the 1970ies:
We were savages living in the ruins of a great civilization of Rockefellers and Carnegies. Growing up, we owned downtown. Nobody wanted it. We roamed the streets like they were ours. The Flats was a place of deep mystery. It was our modern art museum. We would drive through the steel mills and within 20 yards of open blast furnaces. We weren’t duplicating those sounds. Those sounds were showing us the way to change the narrative vehicle of modern music.
(Cleveland Magazine, 11/22/2017)

8619 Beschäftigte

hatte dieses mittelgroße Hüttenwerk mit einer Roheisenkapazität von 2,8 Mio. T/J in den 1970er Jahren (ohne Hauptverwaltung).
In den Medien werden bei der Berichterstattung über die Stahlindustrie meist Mitarbeiter aus dem Hochofen- oder Stahlwerksbereich gezeigt. Diese machten aber nur etwa ein Achtel der Gesamtbelegschaft eines Hüttenwerkes aus.
Dieses Dokument zeigt einmal wie sich die Beschäftigten auf die zahlreichen Abteilungen verteilten.

800 blast furnaces.

Blast Furnaces of the world
The blast furnace, as one hears from its operators, will soon follow the dinosaurs and disappear.
Therefore, as a by-product of the pandemic time-out, a contribution to its history:
The nearly 800 blast furnaces existing in the western hemisphere (so called “free world”) in 1965.
Corrections are welcome.
But please note that this map refers to the year 1965.

10/72. Republic Steel Corp., South Chicago Works.

In 1965 there were 237 blast furnaces at 72 locations in the U.S. . This series will briefly introduce all of them.

 
In the 1960s, Republic Steel was the No. 3 North American steel producer, albeit at a considerable distance from US Steel and Bethlehem Steel.
They maintained a large number of production sites, including several marginal ones, ten of which produced pig iron.
One smaller site was the plant on the banks of the Calumet River in South Chicago, once one of the busiest steel making areas in the U.S. .
In 1965, Republic Steel operated a small coking plant, blast furnace, open hearth and electric arc steelworks, seven rolling mills and a seamless tube production facility there.
Employment peaked at 6.335 in 1970.
In 1977 the plant was modernized on a large scale and a Q-BOP meltshop with two 225 t converters was installed. The electric arc mill was equipped with three new 225 t electric arc furnaces.
The blast furnace was shut down in 1982 and the coking plant continued to operate.
In 1984, Republic Steel merged with Jones and Laughlin Steel and operated under the name of LTV Corp.
The Q-BOP melt shop was sold to Geneva Steel in Utah in 1990 and reopened in 1991.

  • BF: Ø 28’0” (8,53 m)

 

23/38 Hainer Hütte.

1959 gab es in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland noch 156 Hochöfen an 38 Standorten. Alle Standorte und alle Hochöfen sollen in dieser Serie im Kurzportrait vorgestellt werden.

Kreisarchiv Siegen-Wittgenstein, Fotograf Otto Arnold

Die 1444 erstmals erwähnte Hainer Hütte in Siegen gehörte ab 1916 zur benachbarten Giesserei Peipers (später Gontermann und Peipers). 1951 wurde der einzige Hochofen des nun an die  Eiserfelder Hütte verpachteten Betriebs wieder angeblasen und erzeugte 2.200 t Siegerländer Spezialroheisen im Monat.
1955 ging in Hain die erste Masselgiessmaschine des Siegerlandes in Betrieb.
Am 19.9.1962 wurde die Produktion eingestellt.

Die Hainer Hütte erzeugte 1959 29.087 t Roheisen.

Hochöfen Hainer Hütte, 1959.
Hochofen 1: Gestelldurchmesser 2,2 m