Building the Workingman's Paradise
Building the Workingman's Paradise

Author: Margaret Crawford

Publisher: Verso

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780860914211

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This innovative and absorbing book surveys a little known chapter in the story of American urbanism—the history of communities built and owned by single companies seeking to bring their workers' homes and place of employment together on a single site. By 1930 more than two million people lived in such towns, dotted across an industrial frontier which stretched from Lowell, Massachusetts, through Torrance, California to Norris, Tennessee. Margaret Crawford focuses on the transformation of company town construction from the vernacular settlements of the late eighteenth century to the professional designs of architects and planners one hundred and fifty years later. Eschewing a static architectural approach which reads politics, history, and economics through the appearance of buildings, Crawford portrays the successive forms of company towns as the product of a dynamic process, shaped by industrial transformation, class struggle, and reformers' efforts to control and direct these forces.

Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown
Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown

Author: Pat Farabaugh

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2021-10-18

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1467150010

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Johnstown is synonymous with floodwaters and steel. When the city was decimated by a flood of biblical proportions in 1889, it was considered one of the worst natural disasters in American history and gained global attention. Sadly, that deluge was only the first of three major floods to claim lives and wreak havoc in the region. The destruction in the wake of the St. Patrick's Day flood in 1936 was the impetus for groundbreaking federal and local flood control measures. Multiple dam failures, including the Laurel Run Dam in July 1977, left a flooded Johnstown with a failing steel industry in ruins. Author Pat Farabaugh charts the harrowing history of Johnstown's great floods and the effects on its economic lifeblood.

Steel Mill Mafia
Steel Mill Mafia

Author: Carl Begovich

Publisher: Published! an Affiliate of Village Voices Gallery

Published: 2012-07-01

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9780984682737

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Frank Mattich--the first in his family to graduate college, the first in his family to go to prison. How does an ordinary school teacher become a mafia style kingpin, dealing in drugs and running a gambling enterprise? "Steel Mill Mafia--The Pittsburgh Connection" explains how a man of common circumstance can turn down the wrong path and how a core of innate goodness can redeem him.

Gary's Central Business Community
Gary's Central Business Community

Author: Dharathula H. Millender

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 9780738523477

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America's famous steel mill town, Gary, Indiana, was created by U.S. Steel Corporation in 1906. The city quickly developed as a diverse labor pool was drawn to the area by the promise of steady work and greater opportunities. This diversity created distinct neighborhoods and cultural centers, but also brought about a conspicuously segregated Gary. Wealthy steel mill executives plotted the north side of Gary, while newly arriving laborers were relegated to an area south of Ninth Avenue known as the "Patch." Soon, however, African-American leaders organized the "Central District," a city within a city for themselves with desirable housing, good schools, and active clubs and community organizations.