YSU professor calls for measures to preserve history of steel mills

Condominiums and other developments are going up on former mill sites.
By SEAN BARRON
VINDICATOR correspondent
YOUNGSTOWN -- Even though it's been more than 25 years since steel mills started closing in the Mahoning Valley, much still needs to be done to preserve the history of the mills.
That was at the heart of Dr. Thomas Leary's lecture and slide show, "Museums and Malls: Steel Heritage Preservation and Brownfield Commercial Redevelopment." Leary's presentation Sunday at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor, 151 W. Wood St., focused on efforts to memorialize the shuttered mills and brownfields, as well as the role preservation policies and finances have played.
"In the late 1980s and early '90s, several efforts were made to preserve the mills. Those generally failed," noted Leary, an associate professor of history at Youngstown State University. "The trend has been away from public investment in preservation sites and toward commercial preservation."
The National Park Service tried to preserve parts of mills for historical significance, he added.
In other cities
Leary pointed out that cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Bethlehem, Pa., Johnstown, Pa., and Buffalo, N.Y., are working on some type of preservation on land once occupied by Bethlehem Steel and other companies.
Many of his slides focused on what has become of the land and structures in the 25 years since the Homestead plants in Homestead, Pa., just east of Pittsburgh, closed.
Most of the blast furnaces have been razed, Leary said, though a few remnants remain -- such as a 12,000-ton piece of equipment used to make armor plates.
The YSU professor said that retail stores and other symbols of commercialization will be or are being built in Homestead, as well as along the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland and in the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania. As a result, it may be difficult for people to see mill remnants in context, he said.
Leary said that he would like to see some photographs or other symbols near the Chevrolet Centre depicting the former Republic Steel facility that formerly occupied that site.
Becoming commercial sites
In some places, he continued, condominiums and malls have gone up on sites once occupied by steel mills. Consequently, any facility to capture the essence of the history of the steel industry will likely be "subordinate" to commercial ventures, Leary noted.
Attempts to build a large museum on the site of the former Bethlehem Steel plant failed.
Owners of the closed mill, through a partnership, are poised to obtain a license for gambling on the site, Leary said.
Leary praised the Youngstown Historical Center, saying he thought the city is perhaps the only community "to build a physical place" to deal with the history of the steel industry.