| The Flame - Part 2 |
| June 15, 2011 |
| STEELWORKERS ARCHIVES, Inc. Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem Room 215 77 Sands Boulevard Bethlehem, PA 18015 |
| The Steelworkers Archives appreciates the fact that the Great Allentown Fair invited us to be part of the Agri-Plex exhibits last year…And we note the great response we had from both the general public and the former steelworkers that visited our exhibit in the hall … Former Steelworkers know full well that in years prior to the eventual total closing of the Bethlehem Steel Plants in Bethlehem Pennsylvania there were agonizing reductions of operations in the Plants that made the then surviving employees emotionally feel like they were suffering a slow death … And yes the death eventually occurred and each individual affected by these closures offered their own personal autopsy on what happened… |
| The Bethlehem Plant was a modern, integrated , Steel-producing unit, processing raw materials into finished iron and steel products, with quality control at each step: coal to coke and coal chemicals; coke, limestone, and iron-ore to pig iron; iron, stone, and scrap to steel; steel to cast, forged, rolled and manufactured It covered approximately 700 acres of land, or about 4 miles along and extending along the Lehigh River 2 1/3 miles The Bethlehem Plant was divided into three sections --- Lehigh Division, Saucon Division and East Lehigh which in 1925 was called the Northampton Division The plant had six operating divisions Coke Works Blast Furnace Saucon Mills Saucon Steel making Alloy and Tool Steel Manufacturing |
| To the left --- Charles Schwab and to the Right --- Eugene Grace |
| Industrial giants like human beings have a beginning and as we learned in 2003 with the bankruptcy sale of the Bethlehem Steel, they have an ending as well. We live in a society today that is very much credential oriented; Consequently individuals need plenty of documentation to enter careers and advance in their careers However, for the men who contributed to America’s industrial revolution, they found their own way into the new age of iron and steel, of mass machine production, as few people before them provided the structured controls that could guide them, regulate them or retard their efforts. Of importance, the blending of the entrepreneur talents of the risk taking Asa Packer, Robert Sayre and John Fritz led to the rise of a iron and steel complex at a railroad junction along the south bank of the Lehigh River called the Bethlehem Iron Company, which in future years evolved into the industrial giant --- Bethlehem Steel. As stated, the land across the Lehigh River from the borough of Bethlehem was the site of a key rail junction. The Lehigh Valley and North Penn railroads met on a narrow flood plan that stretched south for a quarter-mile before reaching the lower slopes of South Mountain. The North Penn link connected the Valley to Philadelphia in approximately three hours and its markets Previously the same trip took 8 hours by stage and several days by canal boat For the Lehigh Valley Railroad, whose seat of operations became South Bethlehem, the idea of using railroads and furnaces in tandem was natural The Lehigh Valley Railroad first hauled coal from Mauch Chunk to Easton in 1855. The Lehigh Valley Railroad could bring coal to fire up the furnace, then haul the finished materials north and east to Easton. The Central Railroad of New Jersey, which reached Easton in 1852, gave the finished materials access to New York City In addition, the North Penn Railroad could take them to Philadelphia. Then in 1859, the East Pennsylvania spur was completed between Allentown and Bethlehem opening up a route west to Harrisburg and Chicago. As stated in the Morning Call’s Chapter 2 of Forging America, railroads needed iron for locomotives and cars, and in the form of rails to repair and extend. However, infrastructure wise, the Lehigh Valley Railroad faced the problem that local furnaces didn’t make rails Reality was, they made pig iron, which was sent elsewhere to become cast products or turned into wrought iron for rails and other shapes. In order to avoid high tariffs on quality British rails and subsidize competitors producing inferior rails which would often cause train accidents and passenger injury or death, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company looked into the idea of establishing their own mill that produced the same quality rail that the British produced Sayre turned to John Fritz in 1860 who had developed a machine that actually had been invented in Wales that solved the problem of inferior rails. Fritz called it the “Three High” rail mill. It’s magic was in rolling square bars of iron into inverted T-shaped rails while they were still hot. The “three-high” referred to three sets of rolls stacked one on top of the other passed between the bottom and middle rollers, then in reverse between the middle and top rollers The industry standard at the time was the two-high mill, the culprit that produced faulty rails. In Two-high Mills, the iron bars or blooms passed through the rolls once, and workers had to haul the blooms to the front for another pass-through.. This delay allowed the blooms to cool presenting the danger of a cracked bloom or damaged machinery. Packer and Sayre located their new enterprise between where the where the Fahey and Minsi Trail Bridge now stand. Fritz designed the machinery and the buildings. The Morning Call concludes that nothing about them were revolutionary; but what distinguishes them were their size and perfection … His theory was make it bigger, make it structurally sound and make it cheaper. The buildings housed a blast furnace and a rolling mill with six heating furnaces and eight double puddling furnaces where pig iron was melted and stirred to become wrought iron for rails. In 1861, Bethlehem Rolling Mill & Iron was reorganized as the Bethlehem Iron Co. Most of its Board of Directors worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad or owned stock in it, and Packer watched over them. For the next two years, Fritz struggled to build the plant despite shortages brought on by the Civil War and severe flooding that damaged the site in 1862. Finally in January 1863, he put the first furnace blast, and in September the mill rolled its first iron rails. Bethlehem Iron made excellent rails first for` the Lehigh Valley and later for other customers in a hungry market. A fast-spreading reputation for quality brought in much profits |
| The Normandie Whistle by Dennis Pearson A whistle that once bellowed for the world's richest and most elegant people and then for steelworkers in Bethlehem before was again rung on Tuesday, June 9, 2009, for the Grand Opening of the Sands Resort Casino- Bethlehem. The 150 P.S.I Steam Whistle from the luxury French cruise liner, S.S. Normandie had been a fixture on # 1 Boiler House in the Bethlehem Steel for many years. It had been salvaged from a ship yard in New York City by the Bethlehem Steel Corpation after a disastrous fire and sinking during renovations in 1942. In 1935, the whistle first adorned the French-built S.S. Normandie, considered the "world’s greatest, most luxurious, most loved" cruise liner according to Stephen Lash, President of the Ocean Liner Museum's Board of Directors. His comment was made at a press conference in Bethlehem Pennsylvania on April 20, 1985, when the whistle was turned over by the Bethlehem Steel Corp. to the museum. When the 1,019-foot ship was cruising the Atlantic, the whistle announced arrivals and departures for the famous liner, which carried 3,326 people including crew. When World War II arrived, the 79,280-ton French ship was brought to New York Harbor to keep it out of the hands of the Nazis who had taken over France at the onset of WWII and to convert the famous cruise liner into a troop carrier. On February 6, 1942, as it was being converted to a troop ship in New York, a welder's torch started a fire that raced through the ship. Water poured on it by fire boats capsized the ship. Later that month the U.S. Navy hired a commercial salvage firm, Merritt, Chapman & Scott, a firm associated with the Bethlehem Steel Corp., to take apart the Normandie's superstructure, including its whistles. Bethlehem Plant General Manager David Blackwell stated (April 20, 1985), "Someone had the foresight not to throw out this beautiful brass whistle." Harvey Ardman, in his 1984 book, Normandie: Her Life and Times, records that in 1946- 1947 ten railroad cars full of the ship's steel left daily from a Newark scrap yard for steel mills in Pittsburgh, Coatesville, and Bethlehem. In Bethlehem, Raymond Hess of Allentown and his friends found the brass steam-powered whistle in a railroad car and placed it on the roof of #1 Boiler House. Number 1 Boiler House and its companion, # 2 Boiler House of Bethlehem’s Steam, Water and Air Department, were taken down sometime after July 4, 1999. The only evidence that exists today of the location of # 1 Boiler on the former grounds of the Bethlehem Steel Company is the former railroad inlet for the Boiler House that is tied to the Masson-Hoover trestle going to the Blast Furnace from the former Ore-pit -- now the Sands Resort Casino. For many years the whistle announced shift changes and plant emergencies. It also served as a fire call for City of Bethlehem fires. The whistle last rang out in Bethlehem on November 24, 1984, for testing, only to be removed from the roof top of #1 Boiler House the same day. The bell had suffered some damage in its removal and needed some repair. It had not been rung regularly since 1952 when the powerful valve stuck open for two hours before it was silenced in fear of a repeat performance and the fear that it would become an irritant to the neighborhood surrounding the plant. According to Hess, the 620-lb. steam whistle shook the boiler house every time it blew and would let loose a stream of dust every time it blew. On June 3, 1985, the 50th Anniversary of the Normandie's arrival in New York after her maiden voyage, the city's South Street Seaport arranged with the local utility, Consolidated Edison, to have the steam power attached to the ship's whistle. The curator at the American Merchant Marine Museum and a founder of South Street Seaport said: "It was so loud, local merchants asked us never to do that again." Consequently, it was never rung adjacent to the South Street Seaport again and found a new home in the bell and whistle collection of Steven Millstar at the Platt Institute in Brooklyn. The 620-lb whistle did provide some difficulty for the maintenance people to remove. At one point the heavily used hemp rope began fraying on the roof, and it took an effort to keep the whistle under control. The last thing these guys wanted to do was to let the whistle fall to the ground below. But that is what happened when the rope broke. The whistle fell 24 feet to the paved court yard. Luckily, for the Oceanic Liner Museum and the Company the fall produced only minor damage and was easily repaired. Personnel involved in the removal of the whistle from # 1 Boiler House included: Donald Sandt, Millwright Foreman, Steam Water and Air Dept.; Harvey Bartholomew, Millwright and Working Leader; Stan Devan, Millwright; Bob Hrichak, Millwright; and Clarence Coverly, Mechanical Helper. Dennis Pearson was the Stoker Tender of the Beitenhausen Oil Boilers in #1 Boiler House which provided the energy to the blow the whistle. (c) 2008/2009 by Dennis L. Pearson All Rights Reserved --- No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the author. |
| Normandie Whistle in 1984 Photo Courtesy of Harvey Bartholemew |
| Normandie Whistle as it appeared in 2009 for Grand Opening of Sands Casino Resort - Bethlehem |
| Representative Joe Zeller Lehigh Valley State Normandie Whistle Representative Joe Zeller standing nearby the Sands stands in front of Former Sign on the former Bethlehem Steel Ore |
| Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem --- located on site Raw Material Facility commonly known as the Ore Pit ... Sands sign as been placed on the last remaining Ore Bridge on property |
| Normandie Whistle at the opening of the Sands Casino Resort - Bethlehem ... Part of Bethlehem Steel's History merged with the history now being created by the Sands Casino Resort - Bethlehem and the legacy created by France's S.S. Normandie |
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