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Did you know?
1850s - Railroad tracks were built with a combination of wood and iron. On these difficult to maintain tracks, the iron slats would come loose, ripping through trains as they passed, causing great injury and destruction. This led to plans to build all railroad tracks of steel only, greatly increasing the demand for steel by the 20th century.
1899 - John J. Albright and his business partner, General Edmund Hayes, joined four other industrialists to form the Lackawanna Steel Company.
1905 - The Gallery’s benefactor, Mr. John J. Albright, purchased land along Lake Shore Drive that is now the current home of the steel facilities known as ArcelorMittal Steel. This site was formerly known as Lackawanna Steel and then Bethlehem-Lackawanna Steel.
1911 - Buffalo was the second largest railroad terminus in the country, second only to Chicago.
1917 - Buffalo’s Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company was the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world.
1922 - In October of 1922, Bethlehem Steel, the second largest steel company in the United States, acquires Lackawanna Steel for $60 million.
1939 - Bethlehem Steel President, Eugene Grace, when hearing about the start of WW II, is quoted as saying, “Gentlemen, we are going to make a lot of money.”
1940s - During World War II, Buffalo’s Bethlehem-Lackawanna Steel was the largest steel producing company in the world with 20,000 workers at this location. There was also production at nine major steel plant locations in addition to Buffalo’s Lackawanna plant.
Late 1940s, 1950s - Bethlehem Steel is responsible for building the skeletons of many of the most famous bridges and skyscrapers in the country, including the George Washington Bridge and Chrysler Building in New York, and the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia.
1971 - Bethlehem Steel’s 18,000 person workforce was cut in half.
1983 - Bethlehem Steel closes its Lackawanna plant.
2005 - Mittal Steel merged with the International Steel Corporation to acquire parts of the Lackawanna plant.
2007 - Arcelor and Mittal merged into ArcelorMittal Corp, which now runs a portion of the Lackawanna plant.
For more information on Buffalo and its industrial past
The History of Buffalo, NY
The Lackawanna Local History and Steel Plant Museum
Article on Bethlehem Steel
History about Lackawanna
Two recently published books about the steel industry in the United States
Reutter, Mark. Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might. New York: Summit Books, 2005.
Hoerr, John P. And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of the American Steel Industry. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,1988.