Eliza Furnaces and Coke Ovens

1902

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Eliza Furnaces and Coke Ovens
  • Title
  • Eliza Furnaces and Coke Ovens
  • Identifier
  • MSP33.B004.F06.I06
  • Source Identifier
  • MSP33.B004.F06.I06
  • Description
  • Caption on the back of the photograph taken of a lithograph reads, “Old view (about 1902) of J&L’s Pittsburgh Works, looking from the South bank of the Monongahela River to the Eliza Blast Furnaces and coke ovens on the North Side.” The lithograph shows the Jones & Laughlin Pittsburgh Works complex with the Hot Metal Bridge, built in 1877, in the left foreground. In July 1859 Laughlin & Company, later to become Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, acquired land on the north side of the Monongahela River (left of river) opposite Brownstown (currently part of the South Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh). Two blast furnaces, called Eliza furnaces, and some beehive coke ovens were built on this site. A fourth blast furnace was added to the Eliza Works and the older stacks were either rebuilt or replaced, so that, by 1901, there were four modern blast furnaces at the Eliza Works. In 1904 the fifth blast furnace was built at the Eliza Works, and the annual capacity of the six stacks reached 1,035,000 tons of metal. A major expansion of the open hearth steelmaking capacity started at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation’s South Side Works (right of river) between 1904 and 1908 in which nine 200 to 250-ton open hearth furnaces and an additional Bessemer converter were added, allowing the mill to achieve an annual capacity of over 1,425,000 tons of steel ingots. In 1916 a sixth blast furnace was added to the Eliza Works, across the Monongahela River from the South Side Works, which allowed ingot capacity to reach 1,740,000 tons per year in 1920, and two million tons in 1930. The South Side Works were abandoned in the late 1980s, and in the early 1990s the site was razed for redevelopment.
  • Genre
  • photographs
  • Subject
  • Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation.Soho Works.
    Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation.Pittsburgh Works.
    Steel industry and trade--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.
    South Side (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
    Hot Metal Bridge (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
    Blast furnaces--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.
    Coke-ovens--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.
    Monongahela River (W. Va. and Pa.)
  • Source
  • Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation Collection Photographs, 1864-1953, MSP 33, Library and Archives Division, Senator John Heinz History Center
  • Contributor
  • Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center
  • Collection
  • Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation Photographs
  • Rights Information
  • Copyright Not Evaluated. The copyright and related rights status of this Item has not been evaluated. Please refer to the organization that has made the Item available for more information. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use.
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