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    Youngstown Postcards From the Steel City
    Youngstown Postcards From the Steel City
    Youngstown Postcards From the Steel City
    Ebook164 pages31 minutes

    Youngstown Postcards From the Steel City

    By Jeff MacSwan

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    Youngstown, Ohio was a rapidly growing industrial city in the early 20th century. In 1900, the city had a population of about 45,000; ten years later, it nearly doubled to 80,000, and by 1920 had reached 120,000. This phenomenal growth was reflected in a number of structures that dotted the city's skyline, including the Mahoning Bank Building, the Masonic Temple, and the plants of three major steel companies along the banks of the Mahoning River. Youngstown also had new places for its citizens to play during this period-Idora Park, Mill Creek Park, and Wick Park. And this was all preserved for the future through another early-20th century phenomenon-the postcard. Over 190 vintage postcards illustrate this book, which will bring the reader back to the era when Youngstown was rapidly becoming the third largest steel producer in the nation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 30, 2003
    ISBN9781439630402
    Youngstown Postcards From the Steel City
    Author

    Jeff MacSwan

    Jeff MacSwan is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Maryland, USA. He is also Professor of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, and affiliate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, the Center for the Advanced Study of Language, and the Maryland Language Science Center.  His research focuses on the linguistic study of bilingualism and codeswitching (or language alternation), and its implications for theories about the role of language in educational settings for multilingual students.

    Read more from Jeff Mac Swan

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      Youngstown Postcards From the Steel City - Jeff MacSwan

      Society.

      INTRODUCTION

      At the dawn of the 20th century, a vibrant city grew rapidly along the banks of the Mahoning River in northeastern Ohio. Established in 1796 by John Young, the city that bears his name started life as a tiny village on the edge of what was then the wild west. From these humble origins, Youngstown became one of the largest steel manufacturers in the world by 1920. The iron and steel industry emerged early in the Mahoning Valley’s history. In 1803, brothers James and Daniel Heaton built the first blast furnace west of the Alleghenies in the nearby community of Struthers. The iron industry really did not begin to flourish, however, until the 1850s, with the discovery of extensive local deposits of coal and iron ore. Coupled with the developing railroad industry, the demand for the products of the Mahoning Valley’s blast furnaces and rolling mills dramatically increased.

      Steel, which is an alloy of iron and carbon, was unable to be mass-produced until the invention of the Bessemer Converter in the late 1850s. Named for its creator, Englishman Sir Henry Bessemer, this new technology revolutionized the ferrous industries. In 1875, Andrew Carnegie opened his first steel mill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which he named the Edgar Thompson Works (or E.T.) after his former boss at the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Ohio Steel Company (which eventually became a part of the U. S. Steel Corporation) poured the Mahoning Valley’s first Bessemer Process steel in 1895. Other steel makers quickly followed the Ohio Steel Company’s lead, thus giving Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley its signature industry and image. The Mahoning Valley’s mature industry just prior to World War II was represented by three major steel manufacturers: the locally-owned Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, the Republic Steel Corporation, and Carnegie Steel (a division of the United States Steel Corporation). Along with these giants, there were companies in numerous support industries, including the William B. Pollock Company, which manufactured blast furnaces and other steel industry machinery; United Engineering and Foundry; and Commercial Shearing Corporation. Thousands of families relied on steel and related ferrous industries for their livelihood.

      With the expansion of the steel industry came a great need for thousands of unskilled workers. The immigrants flooding into the United States from eastern and southern Europe came to cities like Youngstown to fill the positions in the steel mills hungry for their labor; at one time more than 30,000 persons worked in steel or a related industry. The newcomers contributed to Youngstown’s rapid population increase from 45,000 in 1900 to 80,000 in 1910, 120,000 in 1920, and 170,000 by 1930. With such a large immigrant (and working class) population, the Steel City often found itself beset by conflict. The often uneasy relations between the classes and ethnic groups manifested itself in major steel strikes in 1916, 1919, 1937, 1949, 1952, and 1957. While local community leaders attempted to ameliorate class tensions and cultural differences by promoting such programs as Americanization classes, the fact remained that the Mahoning Valley was a scene of class and ethnic struggle for years to come.¹

      As the city grew, its desire to promote an image of itself as an important and booming community was expressed in its built environment. During the first three decades of the 20th century,Youngstown’s downtown skyline changed dramatically. In 1900, there were still remnants of a community that was more small town than city. Most of the buildings were no more than four or five stories tall and of load-bearing masonry or wood construction. As early as 1909, when the Mahoning National Bank announced that it was building a new headquarters on the southwest corner of Central Square and Market Street, the Youngstown Vindicator proclaimed that Should the Mahoning bank [sic] decide on the building of a new skyscraper, and the project of a new modern hotel on the Tod House site be carried out, Central Square would assume in its architecture a truly metropolitan appearance.² By 1930, the commercial district housed a number of steel-framed skyscrapers, important public buildings, and large department stores. With the exception of the Art Deco Central (now Metropolitan) Tower, the mature city’s new buildings hid modern construction techniques behind traditional facades. Youngstown’s new structures were the work of not only important local architects such as Charles F. and Charles H. Owsley and Louis and Paul Boucherle, but also those with a national

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