Blog Archives

Apr 25 2025

A group in hard hat walk through the ore yard in front of the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

Metal Arts Team Hosts Second Intercollegiate Iron Pour at Carrie

By Account Manager Blog, Heritage Highlights, Historic Preservation

Dr. Kirsten L. Paine

Metal Arts Team Hosts Second Intercollegiate Iron Pour at Carrie

While commercial iron production ceased at the Carrie Blast Furnaces in 1982 and operations shuttered entirely in 1984, there has always been a lingering hum of creative inspiration that draws people to the site. The Rivers of Steel Metal Arts team thrives at Carrie. They continuously make opportunities to teach people and show them what it is like to create with liquid metal.

Led by Ed Parrish Jr., the Metal Arts Coordinator and Furnace Master at Rivers of Steel, workshops like the recent Intercollegiate Iron Pour increase access to the site’s creative potential and welcome artists and craftspeople from all backgrounds to gather and tap into Carrie’s legacy of ironmaking. Last month students from Carnegie Mellon University, Alfred University, Seton Hill University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Notre Dame gathered for an intensive workshop that culminated in an iron pour in front of the nearly 120 year-old Carrie #6.

Participants ranged from undergraduates learning to cast metal or refining their skills, to graduate students working on capstones and theses, professors, and artists. Carnegie Mellon students were enrolled in a mold making class. Some students brought molds with them for the pour.

Intercollegiate iron pours like the one at Carrie are invaluable hands on experiences for students. Such programs can light a fire and stoke a passion for iron making, casting, and honing craftsmanship for an entire lifetime. Paige Henry, Metal Arts Technician at Rivers of Steel, remembers her first iron pour in 2007 at the Salem Art Works. She was a student at Alfred University at the time. She says, “I was 19. It was a pivotal moment for me that changed the trajectory of my undergraduate studies. It was not only a team effort to create art, but as soon as the bottom dropped we all became a sort of family. After many years of attending the Intercollegiate I later became the Foundry Director at S.A.W. when their Intercollegiate iron pour evolved into their inaugural Festival of Fire.” Carrie could be life changing for someone in the same way Salem Art Works was for Paige Henry, and it starts with bringing people together.

Iron pours are collaborative by nature. In addition to skillwork, participants hone in on critical teamwork. Henry says, “we try to demystify the cast iron process and emphasize that there is a job for everyone. If someone wants to try pouring the bull ladle, we have a safe and controlled space to give them the guidance and opportunity to do so. If someone isn’t ready to get close to the fire and heat, and lift heavy things they can take photos, observe, and/or be the timekeeper; every person and every job is necessary for a safe and comprehensive iron pour. We always seek ways to be as accessible and safe to all sorts of people that want to participate.”

As far as what sets an Intercollegiate Iron Pour apart from some other arts events at Carrie, Henry says that “an intercollegiate brings together many different colleges and universities to participate in an almost ritualistic practice to make art where everyone is an integral component in its success.” Ritual is key. The practice taps into traditions that stretch millenia, bringing ancient artforms to life at the base of a monument to the creation of modernity. The ritual–where attention to every detail of the process is critical and communication is vital–brings people close. “This transfer of ideas and conversations strengthened bonds and created new friendships that otherwise may never have existed,” Henry remarks.

Looking ahead to another Intercollegiate Iron Pour in 2026 and beyond, the team responsible for its success will build on a decades-long foundation of metal arts experience and an approach that prioritizes collaboration. Henry stresses that Parrish’s vision ensures that collaboration is equitable. She says, “I think the foundation that Ed has laid for his program, so to speak, is that everyone has a place at the table and is valued.” Drawing a clear connection between opportunities to create art and opportunities to create community, Henry remarks, “Ed has created a safe space for all sorts of people with varied backgrounds to come together to make art.” She continues, “Without his vision and devotion to the craft and the people, I don’t believe the Metal Arts program at the Carrie Furnaces would be where it is today.”

Henry considers even more potential for expansion. She points to Parrish’s sophisticated set up as an essential part of the future. “The biggest benefit to working out of the Carrie Furnaces is the facility that Ed Parrish has created and provided to the cast iron community. The sand molding set up is leaps and bounds more efficient and user friendly than some places that have had a metal casting program since the late ’80s,” she says.

What does this mean going forward? Henry offers seemingly endless possibilities. “I was in talks at the NCCCIAP at Sloss Furnaces this April with Bob Rogers from the Memphis Metal Museum about potentially offering a green sand workshop during next year’s Intercollegiate. We would like to pair that offered workshop with a blacksmithing workshop making green sand slicks — which are tools for making green sand molds. Strengthening our connections with other existing organizations has been a really positive move forward in connecting our students and participants in what we are doing outside of our region and academia. Camping at the Carrie Furnaces would also make our Intercollegiate more accessible as well as inviting guest furnaces to participate as we grow.”

Programs like the Intercollegiate Iron Pour and the Iron Workshops also allow individual artists to grow, to experiment, and to practice their craft. Detroit-based artist Jay Elias is relatively new to metal arts. He started learning from Casey Westbrook in 2014 and quickly took to iron as an essential, visceral medium. He has attended several iron pours at Carrie. One of his newest pieces, called “Unfinished Business” is an incredible reimagination of a jail cell. The piece is now installed in Carrie’s Iron Garden and beckons visitors to interact with vestiges of incarceration. Elias’ “Unfinished Business” is stunning, and every time he comes back to Carrie, he brings more of his vision to share with others.

While the “driving force of having an Intercollegiate iron pour at the Carrie Furnaces was bringing the cast iron movement back to its roots — to start the spark with students–” the driving force of the Metal Arts program is to bring even more people to a center of industrial arts. Many programs are very beginner-friendly, and others are geared toward more experienced artists. For newcomers interested in learning a new artform– foundry basics, pattern making, mold making, and casting–Intro to Iron Casting might be an exciting opportunity. This three-day course will be offered from May 29th to May 31st, 2025. For more experienced artists who require more shop time and personal instruction, the Weeklong Iron Intensive will be held from May 26th to May 31st, 2025.

**This article would not be possible without Paige Henry’s time and insight. I am grateful for her thoughtful contributions.**

Apr 25 2025

Love2

From the Archive: Women Going to Work in WWII

By Account Manager Blog, Heritage Highlights

US Steel News Front Cover Girl -January 1945

From the Archive: Women Going to Work in WWII

Dr. Kirsten L. Paine

World War II profoundly reshaped the American labor force. With hundreds of thousands of men enlisting or drafted into military service, the threat of a substantial labor deficit loomed over wartime industrial manufacturing. This afforded women an almost unprecedented opportunity to obtain work in the steel industry. Many of the women entering steel mills possessed no prior experience in factory work. Prior to World War II, only lower working class women, poor women who made up the true laboring class in the United States, worked in factories. Most working class women were largely confined to domestic jobs like housekeeping, cooking, sewing, and laundry. Middle class women who wanted to work outside the home found professions considered appropriately feminine, like teaching and nursing.

Perhaps the most indelible image of women’s wartime work is the famous “We Can Do It!” poster, and it features the character now known as Rosie the Riveter. She is a fixture of American pop-iconography. The impossible-to-forget woman embodies brute strength, mental fortitude, and the commitment required to fulfill her patriotic obligation. She fills most of the frame with her flexed bicep in the foreground, emphasizing her physical fitness. Her gaze, direct and unblinking, dares the viewer to challenge her. Her face, pretty with full makeup and pinned hair, subtly eases hesitation with the concept of a woman working in a traditionally male profession. The message is clear: women, work harder. Pick up the tools and carry on.

The poster’s proclamation “We Can Do It!” resonates at a profoundly universal level. It speaks to the inherent human capacity for overcoming challenges and achieving goals through unwavering determination and perseverance. For some people, it represents commitment to a common cause and the necessary inclusion of everyone in order to succeed. For others, the poster is a testament to resilience. For many, the poster’s imagery has become a visual shorthand for women’s empowerment, feminist ideals, and the transformative power of women’s collective action. For Pittsburgh, this towering woman was born here in Allegheny County, along the banks of the Monongahela River Valley.

J. Howard Miller was a graphic artist who lived in Pittsburgh. The Westinghouse War Production Coordinating Committee within Westinghouse Company commissioned him to paint a series of posters aimed at boosting morale. The Westinghouse employees, many of whom were women, were inspired to work harder, produce more, and buy war bonds. Interestingly, the original “We Can Do It!” poster circulated only within Westinghouse for two weeks in February 1942 before being replaced with the next in the series.

The “We Can Do It!” poster resurfaced after World War II and gained incredible visibility by the late 1980s. For decades, many women have claimed to be the inspiration for Miller’s character, but a United Press International photograph of a woman Naomi Parker Frayley, a Naval worker in California, seems to be the likeliest candidate. There were approximately six million Rosie the Riveters during World War II; thousands of them worked up and down the Monongahela River Valley.

Rivers of Steel has collected and preserved artifacts and stories about some of these women in the archives. Part of the collection includes a large print run of US Steel News magazine which is a fascinating industry publication designed to communicate cogent, cohesive company-wide messaging across all US facilities. The World War II era issues occasionally highlight women working in US Steel plants across the United States.

A 1944 issue of US Steel News profiles a twenty-two year-old woman named Martha Hamilla. She lived and worked on her family’s farm in Perryopolis. Nearly every day Hamilla walked from her house to the nearby road and waited for a share-a-ride to take her all the way to the National Tube Company Christy Park Works in McKeesport where she charged 105 millimeter shells in an annealing furnace. The reporter followed Hamilla around the farm while she worked because she had no time to stop for a chat, even pushing a stubborn bull out of the way so they could walk through the field. “I’ve felt my help in manufacturing shells is really important,” she says, but it is clear that working with her family to provide sustenance by way of the land is equally valuable. The article stresses this dual importance and depicts Hamilla working in both capacities.

The January 1945 issue features a cover with two photographs of the same woman, Sophie Wolansky, as the “Steel Mill Worker,” and the “Pin up Girl,” over the subheading “US Steel Salutes the women who help make steel to win the war.” The “Front Cover Girl” article about Wolansky praises her work as a machine operator who can competently use a variety of tools, including a “universal grinder, a surface grinder, a drill press, a do-all saw, and bench work.” The praise for her work ethic is tempered by emphasis on Wolansky’s brothers– all in the military– and her own domestic pursuits away from the plant, like needlework, laundry, and letter writing. The article serves a dual purpose for readers. For women in Wolansky’s position, the feature boosts morale by recognizing factory work as their patriotic commitment. For people who wonder if manual labor might change a woman, mentioning her craftwork and housekeeping assuage that fear.

Magazines, as examples of material culture, are tangible representations of historical trends, ideas, and interests. Oral histories are records of the intangible: memory. Rivers of Steel collects oral histories, and some of the older interviews in the archive document the experiences of local women who worked in mills like Duquesne and Homestead.

On September 4th, 2003, Susan Lineback and Julie Williams interviewed Marie Madar about her experience working as a straightening mechanic at US Steel Duquesne Works. Madar was employed at the mill from 1941 to 1944 and was one of thousands of women who found a way to bring together a sense of patriotic duty and a desire for self-sufficiency through working in industry. When asked about what she remembered about her job, Madar says, “I got a job in the heat treating dept, we had pickling, like a swimming pool for steel, we had furnaces in there where the steel was rolled through and then put into the pickling tanks, and um, straightening machines for round bars and for long rectangle bars. And we also bundled steel with tie raps and loaded them into the box cars, and whatelse…”

Throughout the oral history, Madar continuously recounts how her work at Duquesne during the war was only the beginning for her. At the time she understood that once the war ended and the men returned to factory work, she and her coworkers faced displacement. She recalls, “We were glad that the war ended, we didn’t care!” Madar’s relief in this short exclamation gives way to her need to keep working.

Over the course of her life, Madar parlayed her mill work into jobs in Homestead like Grimburkes appliance store on 8th Ave. and the A&P on 7th. Madar took that experience with her when she and her husband moved to Twinsburg, Ohio. The interview continues as she lists her lifetime of work:

I went to a factory after that, I went to a diaper service where I worked in the mail department where I typed out plates just like your credit plates or anything else. From there I went to Ken Collin’s that was a factory, and that had to have been during some other war that we were involved in…I handled papers, it was the atomic thing. And, I took care of the mail room there, and um, and then we moved up to Twinsburg and I got a job at the telephone company and I worked in bookkeeping, and then I had my last child and I took a couple months off after she was born and then they called me back and I was a telephone operator for Western Reserve Telephone Company. And then I worked in a window replacement where they change the windows, the storm windows and stuff. From there we moved here and I got a job at Pickera XRay and I worked on the first MRI in Ohio. And that’s me. I retired from there. I have a list of work a mile long! But I liked to work, I loved it!

Madar talks amiably about work and how much she enjoyed the physicality of it– the lifting, the stacking, the rolling, feeling the heat from the open hearth furnaces lick at her body, the sweat– and she even brushes off an incident where “rolling Steel bars on skids, you know those wooden skids, I was rolling it and it rolled off the skid onto my foot and I got hurt then and that was it.” She was driven by the love of work itself.

Most of Madar’s oral history, however, is specifically about her experiences at US Steel Duquesne Works. She recalls working with men too old for the draft and working side by side with other women like her, especially the wives and mothers who felt called to the life of the mill. When asked about her memory of the first day she set foot in Duquesne as an employee, she recounts:

The first thing I remember was I was hired on Memorial Day and they walked us through the mill, through a portion of the mill, it was a short portion. And um, it was 11 o’clock in the morning when we were walking through, they had the whistle blow and the church bells were ringing, and we were told to bow our heads and pray because it was during the war. That I’ll never forget, that was so touching.

Marie Madar died in 2014 at the age of 91.

Regina Kowalski was looking for an outlet for her anxiety and aimlessness following her husband’s enlistment in 1941. At the time her brother-in-law worked as a police guard at US Steel Homestead Works and suggested she might find a job there. Kowalski took him up on that offer and made three streetcar changes all the way from her home in Sharpsburg.

In her 2003 oral history, Kowalski says that her application to work at Homestead was initially rejected because she was underweight, but she persisted. She says, “So, I begged them, I’d been everywhere. He says, “okay, we’ll get you heavy shoes.” And with that, she was hired. Kowalski candidly remembers:

We had to wear steel toed shoes. We had to go through a check up, everything checked good except my weight was a little light. But then they gave you these heavy pull on overalls and glasses and you had to have your hair all covered and steel toed shoes before they let you go through the mill. Then they give you some test, how to put things together and this and that. Just like children. We thought we were children playing with toys.

With a war on and steel production ramping up to meet American military needs, the dismissal and skepticism Kowalski encountered gave way to the urgency of the national task. Kowalski says, “So we went into the mill, and it was scary at first. But then we went into a labor gang, we had to start […] They had emptied box cars of brick for the furnaces.” So Kowalski and her coworkers picked up bricks and started carrying the load.

Parts of her interview focus on how she tried to maintain a sense of her own life beyond the anxiety of waiting for her husband, John, to write to her. When asked about what she took for lunch, she answers, “Well, I’d take a sandwich or whatever, and a piece of fruit or a vegetable,” and then brings her memory back to the waiting and wondering: “Of course at that time you didn’t feel like eating a whole lot, you had other things on your mind. The war, how are they doing, your husband, how is he, I wonder what he is doing, crazy things, you know.”

Regina Kowalski was laid off in September of 1945, just after VJ Day. She remembers being let go: “the end of the war was announced, we were not allowed to go back into the mill […] All the women, the men, yes, but the women were not allowed to go back into the mill because our work was done.” She says “it didn’t upset me” because “I was happy to, […] because all the whistles were blown and everything was going on and that and everybody was dancing in the streets and that. ‘The war is over, the war is over!’ It was, well, you could cry even now when all that happened. We knew our men were coming home, the ones that were left.” John Kowalski was among those left. Did US Steel ever thank her for her work? Her service? She says yes. The women were thanked, “but we were there because we wanted to help, we didn’t even look for a thanks.”

The interviewer applauds Kowalski’s ability to recall her time at Homestead in such detail after many decades, but Kowalski shrugs off the compliment and offers up a simple, yet powerful testament to why she can conjure it up: “Because I try to still see the mill, the way it was, the way it should have been left. When I go by Homestead now I see all those buildings and all that ground and those great big stove pipes that smoke was coming through, you just can’t visualize that it went down like that.”

And when Kowalski died at the age of 102 in 2018, her obituary called her a “Rosie the Riveter.”

Women working in steel mills during World War II encountered many challenges. The work was arduous, wholly dangerous, and often involved taking shifts through two or three turns in extraordinarily hot, loud, and dark settings. They operated throughout all parts of the factory, from blast furnaces to open hearths, rolling mills, plate mills, rail mills, and machine shops. They were blacksmiths, masons, electricians, pipe fitters, finishing workers, and transported all kinds of raw and processed material. The work demanded substantial physical strength and endurance, and women met those demands. Most women were also required to simultaneously manage domestic obligations and childcare outside of working hours. Their contributions to wartime production levels proved pivotal and not only sustained US American industrial output, but also contested conventional gender roles and established a precedent for expanding women’s socioeconomic potential through the labor force.

Here are some links to consider if you’re interested in learning more about the history of Rosie the Riveter and women’s factory work in World War II.

Rosie the Riveter NPS

Library of Congress Image 1

Library of Congress Image 2

Margaret Bourke-White Essay and Photos

Listen to “Rosie the Riveter”

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Dec 11 2024

Love1

A wavelike structure is lit in blue lights and see in a park at dusk.

Getting to Know: Shiftworks

By Carly McCoy Blog, Getting to Know

A light installation by Joshua Challen Ice, Aurora, 2024, lights up Mellon Square. Photo by John Altdorfer courtesy Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.

Getting to Know: Shiftworks

The Getting to Know series helps you become better acquainted with some of Rivers of Steel’s partners throughout the eight-county Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area by featuring one of our community allies. For the third and final part of the Shiftworks series, writer Jason Vrabel examines how Shiftworks Community + Public Arts serves its mission through its impactful client service work.

By Jason Vrabel, on behalf of Shiftworks

Shiftworks’ Client Service work is making an impact

A few blocks away from a two-story, undulating arc of kaleidoscopic light spanning a downtown park is a dynamic light show crossing the Allegheny River. Aurora: Illuminating the Holiday Magic of Mellon Square is an interactive public art project in Pittsburgh’s historic Mellon Square created by local artist Joshua Challen Ice. The Three Sisters, designed by local art collective Rainbow Serpent, brings global meaning to the Roberto Clemente, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Carson Bridges, commonly known as the city’s Three Sisters.

Both of these projects that helped kick off this year’s Highmark Light Up Night festivities resulted from a partnership between several nonprofits and city and county agencies, a collaboration facilitated by Shiftworks Community + Public Art’s Client Services program.

Aurora, Joshua Challen Ice, 2024. Photo by John Altdorfer courtesy Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

Holiday Ecosystem

Mellon Square is a newcomer to Light Up Night, a longstanding tradition that kicks off downtown Pittsburgh’s holiday season. Not to be confused with Market Square, Mellon Square is a park; designed by famed landscape architecture firm Simonds and Simonds and built on top of a parking garage, it was the first of its kind. Surrounded by towering buildings along Smithfield Street, Oliver Avenue, William Penn Place, and Sixth Street, the park’s trees and bronze basin fountains became an oasis in 1950s Pittsburgh. The park is city owned but primarily maintained by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy (PPC), which oversaw its complete restoration in 2014 and has taken responsibility for landscaping, programming, and security year-round ever since.

Mellon Square is a popular destination spring through fall, but it’s typically closed during winter to protect the park’s signature terrazzo surface from harsh snow and ice removal. James Snow, PPC’s vice president and chief administrative officer, said the pandemic renewed civic interest in public spaces and provided an opportunity to expand Mellon Square’s operating season for downtown workers, residents, and visitors.

“Parks aren’t complete without people. If people don’t feel connected to them year-round, you’re missing half the equation,” Snow said. So instead of going dormant this winter, Mellon Square will remain open and play a role in downtown’s “holiday ecosystem.”

This idea appealed to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership (PDP), an organization that fosters economic development and works to cultivate a vibrant residential population. PDP’s Senior Director of Urban Design Bruce Chan said the PDP sees downtown as more of a neighborhood than a city center.

“As a steward of public places, we look for space between buildings, where people can find some intrigue—fun things you won’t find in other places,” Chan said.

The PDP has been successful with the programming that it initiated throughout the year, such as the farmers market, night market, and musical performances in Market Square, but Chan says open space is limited.

“How do we use that energy and momentum in other public spaces downtown?” he asked. Wanting to build upon annual events like the holiday market, the PDP approached the PPC about incorporating Mellon Square.

Instead of simply adding decorative lighting for the holidays, Snow said the PPC wanted to think bigger and approached Shiftworks about the possibility of creating a temporary art piece. Best known for leading civically engaged art in the public realm, Shiftworks also supports other organizations pursuing public art projects through its Client Services program, a fee-for-service opportunity available to any organization or company.

Derek Reese, Shiftworks’ program manager of artist services, said his organization was involved at every stage of the project, starting with conceptualizing how to bring public art to Mellon Square. Shiftworks then solicited five paid design proposals from its Pittsburgh Creative Corps (an extensive roster of prequalified artists), supported the selected artist throughout the project, and helped to finalize engineering details and obtain permits.

This artist selection process yielded high-quality submissions, but Joshua Challen Ice’s concept stood out, Reese said.

“There were many highly innovative proposals, but Josh’s was the most site specific. His design concept responded to the unique design features of Mellon Square as well as the surrounding architecture.”

Ice, a Murrysville native and Point Park University graduate, is a multimedia artist who has created lighted sculptures before. A wall of his studio showcases art made with neon tubing he repurposed from commercial signs. But it was Ice’s background in theatrical stage lighting and exhibit installation that enabled him to work at this scale.

Across the street from the former Alcoa Corporation building, Aurora’s aluminum truss rails invoke the history of aluminum manufacturing in Pittsburgh. Suspended between the rails are hundreds of polycarbonate panels that, when lit by programmable LED light sources, produce the full light spectrum. Ice’s design also takes inspiration from Mellon Square’s argyle-patterned terrazzo floor. These panels are intended to appear as if “the floor is floating away,” Ice said.

Because Aurora can be disassembled and possibly reassembled somewhere else after the holidays was another reason Ice’s project appealed to the project team, Snow said. But constructing the rails and suspending the panels on axles was an engineering feat that fell to Flyspace Productions, an event management, event production, and art services company whose motto is Yeah, we can do that. Flyspace and Shiftworks have partnered on past projects; the familiarity of working together was especially important on a short timeline—16 weeks from issuing a Request for Proposal to completion.

Support from The Benter Foundation and Eden Hall Foundation made Aurora possible from the outset, and additional funding was provided by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

See from below and lit by purple light, the art installation looks like a bridge across the sky with skyscrapers surrounding it creating a vanishing point.

Aurora, Joshua Challen Ice, 2024. Photo by John Altdorfer courtesy Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

Making a Spectacle

Broadening our understanding of what public art is and what it can be is part of Shiftworks’ mission. But unlike sculptures or murals, lighting is sometimes seen as something other than art —a “display” or an enhancement of something else, like a building façade. When asked what visitors should take away from experiencing Aurora, Reese said, “It’s important to us that people begin to see this type of installation as public art, created by a living artist specifically for the space.”

Ice answered the same question this way: “The word spectacle always comes back to me.” Most important to Ice is that people experience the “interactive, exploratory nature of it, which changes when you get closer.” The experience varies both with distance and at different times of the evening into night. “There are peak moments but also subtler moments,” Ice said.

Mellon Square will eventually close after the holiday season, and Aurora will be dismantled. Where it turns up next and in what configuration are unknown, but both Ice and Snow (yeah, what are the chances?) hinted at numerous possibilities. For the PDP, Chan said this project has made a case for activating Mellon Square with different kinds of public art year-round—especially at night.

A night aerial view of three bridges lit in various colors.

The Three Sisters, Rainbow Serpent, 2024. Photo by Allegheny County.

Global Meaning of The Three Sisters

Most of the land Allegheny County owns is parkland. Because the county doesn’t own many buildings, it doesn’t have many high-visibility locations to commission or display public art. But the county does have an abundance of bridges.

So for the second year in a row, the county’s Three Sisters bridges were transformed on Light Up Night into a public art project. This year’s project—a lighting display designed by the Rainbow Serpent—not only represents a public art contribution by the county but is another example of the impact Shiftworks makes through its Client Services program.

“Allegheny County takes great pride in its infrastructure,” said Darla Cravotta, Allegheny County’s director of community affairs and special projects. Of the 400 miles of road and 508 bridges for which the county is responsible, none are more iconic than the Roberto Clemente, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Carson Bridges—the only trio of identical bridges in the world.

The bridges are lit throughout the year, but Cravotta said the county’s $86-million restoration of all three didn’t originally include the technologically sophisticated lighting infrastructure that is now in place. That idea came about during Pittsburgh’s bicentennial celebration in 2016, which featured Energy Flow, a temporary lighting installation on the Rachel Carson Bridge that captivated audiences and prompted the county to rethink the bridges’ lighting schemes.

Cravotta explained that the original lighting was adequate for motorists and pedestrians but neglected the bridges themselves. “The lighting didn’t accentuate the architecture of the bridges. The timelessness of lighting and the gracefulness of the structures were really important to us,” she said.

The county’s exploration of other cities’ lighting programs led to a new concept that would properly light the bridge structures and allow for future projects similar to Energy Flow. According to Brent Wasko, county public information officer, the enhanced lighting system includes almost a half mile of linear video fixtures on the bridges’ suspenders (cables) and 336 more fixtures along the bridge structures—all told, 601,440 LED lights.

Cravotta says this programmable lighting infrastructure is what makes Rainbow Serpent’s The Three Sisters technologically possible, but it was Shiftworks that made it artistically possible.

“We wanted to contribute more public art to the region, but the county can’t do this on its own. We needed Shiftworks to do this for us,” Cravotta said.

Like with Rob Long’s Observing Light bridge-lighting project in 2023, Shiftworks solicited paid proposals from qualified artists and provided the county (and their project team) with a short list for consideration.

Rainbow Serpent is a Pittsburgh-based art collective with 40 collaborating artists from around the world, dedicated to advancing Black LGBTQ culture through the exploration of emerging technologies, innovative healing protocols, African cosmologies, and multimedia art. Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna, the organization’s co-founders and co-executive directors, wrote in an email, “In some respects, we see this project as the biggest canvas of our careers, but we also see it as an exciting extension of our contributions to Pittsburgh’s vibrant cultural ecosystem,” which includes the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Glass Center, and Pittsburgh International Airport.

The Three Sisters is an apt title for an art installation on this same-name bridge trio, but Rainbow Serpent said the term also has global connotations. From the artists’ project brief, in North and Central America, “Three Sisters refers to their main crops of squash, maize (corn), and beans, which flourish when grown in close proximity.” Elsewhere, from Nigeria to Brazil and Cuba, “the three sisters” are associated with the goddesses Yemaya, Oshun, and Oya.

“While each bridge highlights a different crop and corresponding Yoruba goddess, the themes of growth, protection, and transformation are universal,” Redd and Owunna wrote. “This alignment allows the light shows on each bridge to complement each other and create a narrative arc that can be understood and appreciated whether viewed individually or collectively.”

Cravotta said that the county’s relationship with Shiftworks “has always been very strong.” In addition to the bridge lighting, Shiftworks has collaborated with the Allegheny County Parks Foundation to support programming for the county-owned Carol R. Brown Sculpture Garden in Hartwood Acres Park.

“When you hire someone to do this work, you want them to be the experts. Shiftworks staff are the experts. Derek [Reese] essentially staffed this project for us,” Cravotta said.

Visitors can experience The Three Sisters now through Highmark First Night Pittsburgh (December 31) and Aurora through mid-January 2025.

About Shiftworks

Shiftworks Community + Public Arts envisions a region in which the creative practices of artists are fully engaged to collaboratively shape the public realm and catalyze community-led change. Shiftworks builds capacity for this work through civically engaged public art, artist resources, public programming, and technical assistance.

If you’d like to learn more about Shiftworks, read about their working relationship with communities in creating public art in part two of the Getting to Know: Shiftworks series.

Nov 27 2024

Love1

A stone sign situated in the grass with flowers around it reads Woodville.

Community Spotlight—Woodville

By Carly McCoy Blog

This Woodville sign welcomes visitors to the former home of John and Presley Neville. Photo courtesy of Neville House Associates.

Community Spotlight—Woodville

By Emma Michaud, Communications Intern

Woodville: Where the Chickens Call Home

They might not know it, but a flock of chickens residing at a National Historic Landmark in Bridgeville just had the view from their run upgraded. Their coop sits beside Woodville (aka the Neville House), which was built by John Neville who gained historic notoriety for his role in the Whiskey Rebellion. And the view from the run? Well, it overlooks a recently restored exterior porch.

Situated on two acres of former farmland, Woodville, which was constructed between 1774 and 1780, has been preserved by the Neville House Associates since the mid-1970s.

A smaller red structure is in the foreground with a large white house with a sloping roof in the background.

The Woodville property contains the John and Presley Neville house, a chicken coop, a demonstration kitchen garden, a shed, privy, a still house, and a recreated cabin. Photo courtesy of Neville House Associates.

“This place is such a gem,” said Susan O’Toole, who has served as the president of the Neville House Associates since 2019. “I’ve always felt this was very important—that Woodville should be cherished, preserved for people to learn our history.”

Susan began volunteering at Woodville in 1985. In time, she joined the board of directors and served as vice president before taking on her current role.

“It becomes a real passion for you, you know. Every year, I learn something new! Raising my kids, I would take them there and they didn’t get the bug from me . . . but they would help out sometimes,” she said with a laugh.

Susan and her other volunteers with the Neville House Associates work to recreate life in southwestern Pennsylvania from 1780 to 1820. The Woodville property contains the John and Presley Neville house, a chicken coop, a demonstration kitchen garden, a shed, privy, a still house, and a recreated cabin. Woodville is the oldest house open for tours in Western Pennsylvania and it is mostly in its original condition.

“There’s a lot to learn from history,” Susan wisely said.

Woodville, as seen from the interior of the property.

One of Woodville’s stories overlaps with John Neville’s role in the Whiskey Rebellion.

Having previously served as a general the American Revolution, John Neville had amassed considerable acreage in the Chartiers Valley including approximately 1,200 acres of land that housed his primary residence, Bower Hill, which was situated just up the hill from Woodville. He had also earned an appointment as the local tax collector.

In the years after the American Revolution, the government created an excise tax on whiskey to help pay back debt from the war. To the farmers in Western Pennsylvania, the new whiskey tax that Neville was charged with collecting was unfair for a variety of reasons, and they began to organize in protest.

On July 17, 1794, Major James McFarlane led hundreds of militiamen to Bower Hill, with the intent of forcing Neville to resign from his position and turn over the tax records. Following a day long battle, they burned Neville’s house on Bower Hill, as well as the other outbuildings.

Fortunately, Woodville was spared, as it was occupied by Neville’s son Presley at the time of the incident. In the ensuing years, the home was occupied by only two additional families.

Half a dozen chickens walk around and peck at the ground near a wood pile in a white fenced in run.

Some of the chickens at Woodville.

During a visit to Woodville, you can learn more about the history of the home, its role in the Whiskey Rebellion, and the story of its preservation and restoration . . . which brings us back to those chickens and the new porch.

The Neville House Associates recently received a Mini Grant from Rivers of Steel to help with the restoration of Woodville’s wraparound porch. Prior to this year, the original covered wooden structure was showing its age. Now restored using more durable modern materials, the porch retains its original appearance and should stand the test of time. With the continued preservation, the Neville House will remain an indoor/outdoor historical museum for people to experience and learn about for years to come.

Additional support for the porch was provided by Colcom Foundation, Schoonmaker Foundation BNY Mellon, Americana Corner, National Association of Colonial Dames of America Allegheny County Chapter, and Roman Family Charitable Trust.

A red painted porch covered by a roof with the ceiling painted blue, and supported with lattice work uprights.

The restored porch faces the road and wraps around one side of the home.

Programming at Woodville includes Whiskey Rebellion Day, cooking demonstrations and workshops, educational events for students, self-guided tours, and more, including the upcoming the Twelve Days of Christmas event on Sunday, December 15, 2024. To begin the evening, guests are welcome to join the Annual Christmas Service of Lessons and Carols from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. at Old St. Luke’s Church free of charge. Afterward, at Woodville, experience how the Twelve Days of Christmas were historically celebrated by touring the site by candlelight from 5:30 to 9:00 p.m. Tours are $10 for adults and $5 for children. No need to register in advance.

To learn more about the mission and programming at Woodville, visit https://woodville-experience.org/.

About the Mini-Grant Program

Rivers of Steel’s Mini-Grant Program assists heritage-related sites and organizations as well as municipalities within the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area to develop new and innovative programs, partnerships, exhibits, tours, and other initiatives. Funded projects support heritage tourism, enhance preservation efforts, involve the stewardship of natural resources, encourage outdoor recreation, and include collaborative partnerships. Through these efforts, Rivers of Steel seeks to identify, conserve, promote, and interpret the industrial and cultural heritage that defines southwestern Pennsylvania.

The Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area is one of twelve supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). Funding is provided via DCNR’s Community Conservation Partnerships Program and the Environmental Stewardship Fund to Rivers of Steel, which administers the Mini-Grant Program.

Oct 17 2024

Love2

a black and white selfie of a woman with a knit cap on in the woods.

Exploring a Sense of Place with Sherrie Flick

By Carly McCoy A Literary Look, Blog

Join writer Sherrie Flick, pictured above, for a conversation about her new book Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist that explores a sense of place in southwestern Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy of Sherrie Flick.

Homing—Exploring a Sense of Place in Southwestern Pennsylvania

On Thursday, October 24, Rivers of Steel will host writer Sherrie Flick at the Pump House for a conversation that explores her journey away from—and back to—southwestern Pennsylvania.

Her latest publication, Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist, is a collection of autobiographical essays that traces her journey from her hometown of Beaver Falls to her cultivated home on the South Side Slopes, with time spent living on the East Coast, West Coast, and a significant stop in between. While reflecting on the experiences that shaped her, Flick offers insights on culture, characters, and place—with a special emphasis on the fabric of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Guiding the conversation with Flick is Amy Camp, who as a trails and tourism consultant is a woman who knows how to explore a sense of place. Also an author and fellow Beaver County native, Camp describes herself as having come up “a town and a decade apart” from Flick. From the boom and bust of a steel town adolescence to the vibrant communities these women help to shape today, Rivers of Steel explores perspectives of life in the Rust Belt.

In anticipation of this event, Lynne Squilla chatted with both women to learn a bit more about what to expect.

By Lynne Squilla, Contributing Writer

headshots of two white women, one in a cardigan and the other in a sweater, paired with a book cover

Sherrie Flick and Amy Camp will reflect on a sense of place as reference in Sherrie’s book Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist.

Considering How Place Shapes Us

What does it mean to have a sense of place? Rivers of Steel invites two dynamic female authors and creators to delve into this multilayered subject that plays into all of our lives.

Writer Sherrie Flick has visited and lived in many places, from her birthplace in the former mill town of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to her current garden-terraced home on Pittsburgh’s South Side Slopes, with much time spent on the East and West Coasts and points in between. She questioned why she wanted so desperately to leave home and to travel, and why it is that she ultimately returned to this Rust Belt roost. The result is a collection of autobiographical essays in her new book, Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist.

“I wanted to examine how memory works, to think about the ways in which memory connects to history and to lived experience. Some of the essays in the collection circle around questions and ideas about what it means to leave and what it means to stay in a place you don’t fully understand.”

Flick is the featured author for Rivers of Steel’s evening of conversation at the Pump House on October 24: Homing—Exploring a Sense of Place In Southwestern Pennsylvania. She will read from her essays, which explore how place has shaped her sensibilities as a writer, feminist, educator, and human being, with a special focus on the strange and wonderful area that is Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania.

“Southwestern Pennsylvania can be hard to understand, even if you’ve lived here a while. There is something here that draws people in; it’s that quality of the unknown. The idea of a mystery. There are the common tropes of sports town, mills, and labor, of course. But there is more to this place.”

Flick’s essays delve into these other elements, weaving stories that touch on intriguingly diverse topics such as faith, whiskey, grief, eight ball, and gardening, as well as Andy Warhol, the poet Peter Oresick, her father, and her older brother’s telltale dialect. Flick noted that place has a big impact on each of us, whether or not we are fully aware of it, whether we leave or stay.

“Warhol is a great example of someone who grew up here, sucked in a bunch of ideas and influences, and left to New York to make it big. He didn’t come back here until he died,” she notes wryly.

A woman in a gray t-shirt and bike helmet poses for a photo on a bridge above a river showing whitewater caps.

Amy Camp, author, trails consultant, and fellow Beaver County native, will guide the conversation with Sherrie Flick. Photo courtesy of Amy Camp.

Factoring in Culture, Heritage, and Nature

Guiding the Pump House conversation with Flick will be Amy Camp, an author herself and a trails and tourism consultant whose career has focused on sense of place. As founder of Cycle Forward, Camp was instrumental in launching the nationally recognized Trail Town Program^® in 2007. She works with local leaders and communities to create a more robust outdoor recreation economy in areas hit by industrial collapse. She initially settled in Pittsburgh in 1999 and watched as the empty steel mill sites grew into housing and retail shops.

“There was already a lot of change. It was no longer the Smoky City,” said Camp. “There were already some riverfront trails in place. In my work now, I’m often thinking of culture and heritage and what makes the area special. When you step off the trail into a community, what is that place all about?”

Nature likewise creates a sense of place. Camp likes the idea that the area’s natural surroundings—the rivers and valleys and resources that caused industry to take hold here—are “homing” back to their natural state. She spoke about recently hearing a talk about returning to returning to a nature-positive, carbon-neutral world. “We need to continue to strive to live in better harmony with nature, and this place can be that.”

Camp’s book, Deciding on Trails, gives the backstory of the Trail Town movement and outlines best practices for trail communities. When questioned why she is attracted to Pittsburgh, Camp muses, “I learned recently that my great-grandmother went right from Ellis Island to Hazelwood. So I’m asking, ‘Hmmm, did it have something to do with her? Something deeper than our conscious knowing?’”

A twilight view of a house on a hill that overlooks other homes and the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh from across the river.

Sherrie Flick’s home on Pittsburgh’s South Side Slopes overlooks the community below and the Oakland neighborhood across the Monongahela River. Photo courtesy of Sherrie Flick.

Choosing a Place / Staying or Going

Flick says the Pump House discussion and Q&A with Camp and her will examine the why of choosing to live in a certain place. The audience will be invited to weigh in, too.

“Amy is also from the same Beaver Falls region as me,” Flick says, “and also lives on the South Side, but is younger than me. She has very different opinions about Pittsburgh than I do. So I think we can look at generational layers there. Depending on age and how you experienced a time in history, you’ll have a different conceptual understanding of a place.”

Flick’s parents chose to settle in Beaver Falls at a time when industry was booming. By the time Flick reached high school, the mills had largely shut down.

“The mill town was dying as I graduated high school. Disappearing before my eyes, because of this its history wasn’t written yet. There was no easy way to talk about the region in the mid-80s.”

“People choose ‘place’ for many reasons Flick continued. “My parents ended up in Beaver Falls to have a better life for their kids. Their decision was based in employment. I did the opposite of my parents. I knew for sure I had to leave and I knew I wanted to explore for exploring’s sake. I lived in New England, San Francisco, and Nebraska. I traveled all over the country.”

A tiered verdant garden on a slope above a small yellow home.

Sherrie Flick’s backyard garden, featured in the essays “Cultivation” and “Caretaker, Murderer, Undertaker,” helps define her relationship with the place where she settled. Photo courtesy of Sherrie Flick.

The Give and Take of Place

Sherrie Flick’s travels gained her degrees in English literature from the University of New Hampshire and University of Nebraska and fueled her many books and articles, which have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal and New England Review. She has also garnered numerous fellowships and awards, including a 2023 Creative Development Award from The Heinz Endowments, a Golden Quill, and PA Partners in the Arts grants.

But this prodigal daughter eventually returned to postindustrial Pittsburgh, becoming more involved and aware of the character, history, and community of the area. Among her first creative endeavors from 2001 through 2010 was as co-founder and artistic director of the Gist Street Reading Series. Housed in an artist’s studio on Gist Street in Pittsburgh’s Uptown neighborhood, the freewheeling, monthly event featured local writers and poets, as well as national authors.

Flick also worked at the Frick Art & Historical Center, The Heinz History Center, and has created programming for the Carnegie Museum of Art, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and, most recently, Shiftworks, as part of their Creative Corps. Her Walk & Write programs take small groups through area neighborhoods and unlikely public spaces to observe and write. She is hoping to do one of these sessions at the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark. Flick is currently a lecturer at Chatham University and will serve as the 2025 Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Davidson College.

Flick strongly credits this once-industrial region with forging her feminist viewpoint: “I realized that my feminism was a mix of not just learning theory in a class, but also formed from the idea of labor, of effort, the strength of the body that is a focal point in mill towns.”

She continues, reflecting on her hometown of Beaver Falls: “It was a very macho place, and a person is informed by that growing up as a woman. You notice sexism that’s in your face, but sometimes you can process that to your advantage.”

After years of wandering and more than 20 years of living in Pittsburgh, Flick thinks she’s uncovered some of the draws to this region: “This is not a place that gives in to trends; sure, it’s hipper than it once was. Pittsburgh is settled-in, not pretentious, and bragging won’t get you anywhere. That’s appealing to me.”

Flick added, “You can start things here. It’s a great place for innovation . . . and historically always was. People can make their own way, try things out,” she explained. “Also, because of the hilly geography you often literally stumble on things that are surprising and fun and unusual, so you feel a constant sense of discovery.”

Views of steep concrete steps looking up and down.

Two sets of Pittsburgh’s infamous steps that are referenced in Sherrie Flicks essays help to define both the physical character of the South Side Slopes and reflect its industrial heritage. Photos courtesy of Sherrie Flick.

Exploring the Postindustrial

The Carrie Blast Furnaces, the Pump House, and the Bost Building are among the kinds of unusual discoveries to be made in the Pittsburgh area. Both Flick and Camp feel a connection with Rivers of Steel when it comes to defining place and helping historic sites preserve their history and their significance for future generations: “I wish I had seen all the industry that was here, and at the same time, I’m glad that I didn’t.” Camp said. “This region experienced trauma, and it’s a natural inclination to want to wipe away all that trauma. But the fact that some of it is still standing helps tell the story of this place. I mean, what if there was no Carrie Furnace?”

One of Camp’s favorite quotes about place is from Ed McMahon of the Urban Land Institute. “He said, ‘A sense of place is that which makes our physical surroundings worth caring about.’”

To Camp, Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania’s former industrial communities have an endearing quirk factor worth preserving. Organizations like Rivers of Steel play a major part in that effort, as well as in tying nature, trails, arts, and culture to the story of labor and industry in the region.

“Part of our charge as a National Heritage Area is to engage in storytelling that helps explore and define a sense of place,” said Carly McCoy, director of communications for Rivers of Steel. “We do this throughout all of our programming and the content we share, but our conversation with Sherrie and Amy is an exciting opportunity to really dig in on the topic . . . to have an exchange about what it means to be from southwestern Pennsylvania and even how that varies from person to person. I’m really looking forward to it!”

Like Camp, Flick appreciates this Rust Belt region for its natural features. For the past 20 years, Flick has been happy in her “place,” hiding high atop a hillside in the South Side Slopes, with her many flower and vegetable gardens. “I am addicted to the view. The vista. It makes my world so much bigger to see the whole city before me. But the garden is what grounded me in this place and made me stay here—the organic versus the old industrial.”

Camp sums it up: “This talk at the Pump House is a great opportunity to explore Sherrie’s relationship with the region and how this postindustrial place has informed who she is as a person. It is important to have these conversations around place.”

Sherrie Flick and Amy Camp in Conversation

There are two upcoming opportunities to join in the conversation with Sherrie Flick and Amy Camp. If you can’t make Rivers of Steel’s event on October 24, make your way to Beaver for the next event on November 9. See the details below.

Homing—Exploring a Sense of Place in Southwestern Pennsylvania

Pump House, 880 E. Waterfront Drive, Munhall PA 15120
Thursday, October 24, 2024, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Presented by Rivers of Steel, this is an evening in conversation with writer Sherrie Flick, guided by trails and tourism consultant Amy Camp. From the boom and bust of a steel town adolescence to the vibrant communities these women help to shape today, Rivers of Steel explores perspectives of life in the Rust Belt. The evening will include excerpted readings from Flick, a cumulative Q&A with both women, and the opportunity to pick up a copy of Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist.

Free; register here.

Rustbelt Reflections: A Evening of Written Word & Art

The Baby Bello, 2200 9th Avenue, Beaver Falls, PA 15010
Saturday, November 9, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

If you are unable to attend the event at the Pump House, we recommend this opportunity to hear another conversation with Flick and Camp in Beaver Falls, which also highlights community artist Kit Miller.

Get tickets.

Lynne Squilla is a skilled and creative storyteller. She honed her craft as a writer and producer / director of original scripts, documentaries, articles, web content, stage, and other live presentations. While her work has taken her across the globe, she’s rooted in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and has a passion for sharing stories about our region’s past.

Check out Lynne’s most recent prior article on the Gledaj! Sketching Session at the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

Oct 02 2024

Love2

Creating Legends: Graffiti Writers of the Past, Present, and Future

By Carly McCoy Blog

Creating Legends: Graffiti Writers of the Past, Present, and Future

By Jordan Snowden

At the Carrie Blast Furnaces, energy and creativity have replaced molten iron as the leading commodities supporting their surrounding communities with the help of Rivers of Steel and local and non-local artists through festivals, events, and educational programming.

For the heritage nonprofit’s latest upcoming project, Creating Legends: Graffiti Writers of the Past, Present, and Future, graffiti artists from around the world will mix and mingle with one another and with residents of Pittsburgh and Mon Valley communities. The project is presented by Rivers of Steel in partnership with Hemispheric Conversations Urban Arts Project (HCUAP).

Running from October 14 – 20, this multilayered, community-based program serves as a weeklong residency for select artists to engage with youth, create new murals, and participate in free public events at The Warhol and Carrie Blast Furnaces.

Or, as Scott Brozovich, Rivers of Steel’s graffiti coordinator and teaching artist, put it: “Creating Legends serves as a way to work with legends—like New York graffiti writer pioneers and United Graffiti Artists, aka UGA, founding members Henry 161 and Mike 171—to create new legends.

“I think the part that gets slept on a little bit is the ‘creating,’” says Brozovich. “You know, because we’re bringing legends out, but that’s not the purpose of the program. The program, in my eyes, is to use people like Henry and Mike to inspire others to become legends themselves.”

Chris McGinnis, Rivers of Steel’s senior director of programs & regional partnerships, understands the excitement of bringing famous artists to the region and the impact it can make on youth but also acknowledges what programs like this can do for the communities over time.

“Our graffiti arts programs are anchored in the legacy of our region’s postindustrial past,” said McGinnis. “Not unlike a moth to a flame, creatives of all types have been lured by the Carrie Blast Furnaces, including the graf writers in the 1980s and ’90s. But more importantly, our program is also centered on our region’s future. By working with youth and partnering with an array of collaborators—HCUAP, individual artists, community centers including Rankin Christian Center and Dragon’s Den—we can build skills, create confidence, and spark interest among our communities’ youngest artists, while also crafting something beautiful for everyone whose eyes rest on the murals.”

Title image for creating legends with spray can and artists names

The 2024 Program at a Glance

Creating Legends kicks off on Monday, October 14, with a community event during Rankin Christian Center’s Fall Festival. All of the Creating Legends artists—from the Netherlands’ hip-hop-leaning graphic muralist Mr. June to local artists working with HCUAP, including Shane Pilster who helped develop Rivers of Steel’s graffiti arts program—will be available for a meet and greet, as well as a live community painting session. Alongside music and food options are pumpkin carving, games, and a portrait mural session.

Come Wednesday, Mike 171 and Henry 161, known worldwide as The Boys from the Heights, join self-taught multimedia Venezuelan-American artist Ally Grimm at Homestead’s Dragon’s Den to speak with students about the artists’ backgrounds in the graffiti medium.

Front-runners of style-writing graffiti, The Boys from the Heights helped launch the graphic art form as a global cultural phenomenon and were some of the first graffiti artists to be written about in The New York Times during the 1970s. Grimm, meanwhile, will offer a more modern take on graffiti, as over the years her signature monochromatic style has evolved from paper to canvas, and now murals and digital installations found in cities across America, as well as the virtual world with augmented reality and non-fungible tokens.

That same day, across the river at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Creativity, Roberto Seminario aka Sef, a graffiti artist from Peru whose realistic aesthetic focuses on themes of innocence and purity, and renowned Parisian street artist REVER will share their stories while creating accompanying live paintings.

Thursday, Creating Legends offers another student-focused educational leg, when Sef, REVER, Mr. June, and Grimm visit associate professor of communication Caitlin Bruce’s class at the University of Pittsburgh to share their stories, followed by a Q&A session.

Creating Legends opens back up to the public on Friday at The Andy Warhol Museum’s theater for a Q&A panel discussion featuring all of the artists involved, moderated by Emma Riva, a member of HCUAP. Riva is an art writer based in Pittsburgh. Her work has appeared in Artforum, The Art Newspaper, Newcity, The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, Belt Magazine, and more. She also serves as the managing editor of UP Magazine—an international graffiti and street art publication—and is the online editor of Pittsburgh’s TABLE Magazine.

Henry 161

Riva, who grew up in New York’s Washington Heights—where The Boys from the Heights did—is looking forward to the event. “I’ve done a couple of combinations at this point with different panelists, but this is the third discussion I’ve moderated with Mike [171] and Henry [161], so I feel like I know them pretty well, and they’re really fun people to talk to that have super inspiring stories.

“They’re both sweet people and positive examples of masculinity that are at a point in their lives where they want to share their stories with the world because they were some of the first graffiti writers in the U.S.,” says Riva. “They are some of the originators of the movement, and we’re lucky in Pittsburgh—in any of these arts institutions—that they speak and we get to be near them, to hear from them, while they’re still around.

A man holds up a sheet of plexiglass painted with the name Miki and the number 171.

Mike 171

“I’m always really excited to speak with people in the graffiti community because they are always such big personalities and take some elitism out of being creative,” says Riva.

Saturday, the fun moves to Carrie Blast Furnaces, where the artists will hang out and work on creating new pieces. Mr. June and Grimm are set to paint solo murals, while Sef and REVER are set to paint together. Meanwhile, The Boys from the Heights will lead a special version of the Hands-On Graffiti Tour before turning the spray cans over to guests, offering a chance to paint with the legends themselves.

Closing out the week on Sunday is a paint party at Trace Brewing’s Clement Way legal wall, featuring snacks, drinks, music, live painting, and murals by Dejouir Brown and Juliandra Jones, both of whom currently work with Brozovich to lead Rivers of Steel’s graffiti arts student programs.

For Brozovich, youth engagement is an essential element of the program. “This really means something to me because I didn’t get chances like this as a kid,” says Brozovich. “No one came into my school and was like, ‘Hey, you don’t have to go work in the local factory . . . you could do something else.’ That’s a big part of what the program is—showing youth that you can be something more than just your average worker; you can be a legend.”

split image of artworks created by Carlos Mare and Michael Walsh for industrial grit and graffiti

Artworks by Michael Walsh (left) and Carlos Mare (right) created during the Industrial Grit and Graffiti program in 2022.

The Foundation for Creating Legends

In 2022, Rivers of Steel launched Industrial Grit and Graffiti, a program held at the Carrie Blast Furnaces that was dedicated to exploring the intersection between metal arts and graffiti.

For one week that summer, graffiti arts pioneers Carlos Mare, né Rodriguez, (aka Mare139) and Pittsburgh’s own Michael Walsh joined three local artists to collaborate, learn from one another, and push their personal boundaries and intersections of graffiti sculpture art. Some of those works, including Mare’s sculpture showcasing the movement of breakdancing, are still on display at the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

The program also connected with residents in the nearby communities in the Monongahela Valley—places shaped by both their industrial and postindustrial heritage—for interactive events, ranging from tours and workshops to internships and residencies. These activities, dubbed the Community Learning Series, also culminated with an artists’ talk at The Warhol Museum in December of 2022.

“What’s really nice about the organization is that it’s preserving this whole industrial space for artists to come look at it, be inspired by it, and then go make art,” said Mare in a 2023 video about Industrial Grit and Graffiti. “The opportunities that Rivers of Steel offers someone like me and Michael, who believe very strongly in the ethos of hard work, smart work, forward-thinking work, work that does not come easy—this is a place for people like us.”

Walsh echoed that sentiment, saying, “I was somehow, in these abandoned sites, almost taken over by this industry and the ghost of its spirit. The amount of energy that was expelled here, if you think about that, is pretty hard to grapple with. I think it’s only appropriate that someone from a city like Pittsburgh would work in this medium and continue to.”

While one of the purposes of Industrial Grit and Graffiti was to show how graffiti art can extend to other mediums and opportunities, the format was also a hit with the creatives who participated.

“I want to make this available in the way of encouraging other graffiti artists to work in the industrial arts and work with their hands . . . and 3D art and also work in the ever-emerging and expanding digital realm,” says Walsh.

“Industrial Grit and Graffiti was Rivers of Steel’s second major initiative that used graffiti as an inspiration for creative placemaking and community building,” said McGinnis. “It was borne out of the Murals on a Mission project. Now, picking up where the 2022 program left off, Creating Legends embraces that momentum and features public murals, community-based collaborations, and culminating public events.”

a graffiti art mural with a rocket reading "inspiring the future" and "murals on a mission"

A canvas painted during a Murals on a Mission community event.

McGinnis also acknowledged the support he received from muralist Ashley Hodder. “Ashley was essential in getting Creating Legends off the ground, from early-stage collaboration in drafting the grant requests to connecting us with participating artists and helping coordinate their murals and locations. It was great to have the opportunity to work with her again.”

Creating Legends was made possible through contributions from The McKinney Charitable Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, and the McElhattan Foundation.

Get Involved

Join Rivers of Steel & Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project for a panel discussion featuring nationally recognized muralists and graffiti artists Mr. June, Sef, Mike 171, and Henry 161 at The Warhol Museum on Friday, October 18. The conversation, moderated by Emma Riva, will reflect on how the project is bringing together local, national, and international muralists to celebrate the origins of graffiti and its influence across generations. It is co-presented with The Andy Warhol Museum. The event is free, but registration is required. Sign up here.

Also, don’t miss the opportunity to join the special version of the Hands-On Graffiti Tour at the Carrie Blast Furnaces on Saturday, October 19, led by Mike 171 and Henry 161—The Boys from the Heights. Register here.

So grab your spray paints or simply your listening ears, and come, learn, have fun, and who knows—you may just be the next graffiti legend!

Jordan Snowden is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh whose work has been published in The Seattle Times, Pittsburgh City Paper ,and elsewhere. She also runs @jord_reads_books, a book-focused Instagram account where she connects with other bookworms. In her free time, Jordan can be found with a book in her hand or DIYing something with her husband.

Sep 19 2024

Love1

Insider’s Guide to the 2024 Festival of Combustion

By Carly McCoy Blog, Community Spotlight

An ironworker at the 2023 Festival of Combustion.

Insider’s Guide: The 2024 Festival of Combustion

The chill snap of October, falling leaves, and spooky Halloween décor bring to mind autumn traditions. Leaf peeping and fall festivals are popular seasonal activities—and Rivers of Steel’s Festival of Combustion, presented by U.S. Steel, is a standout among them! It has become a must-do fall tradition for many.

This one-of-a-kind extravaganza, happening this year on Saturday, October 5, attracts thousands of visitors of all ages to the Carrie Blast Furnaces; it is an invitation to join in a celebration of industrial arts and American crafts through hands-on activities, trade demonstrations, tours, live music, fireworks, food, and more. This year, Rivers of Steel’s Festival of Combustion welcomes more than 50 collaborators for the annual all-day event.

By Julie Silverman, Contributing Writer

The Iron Pour and Metal Arts Crew

The spirit of the festival takes its inspiration from the iron-making legacy of this National Historic Landmark—embodied by a deftly orchestrated iron pour featuring Rivers of Steel’s metal arts crew.

“The iron pour is the heart of the festival,” said Chris McGinnis, senior director of programs & regional partnerships. “It’s quite a sight to see! And artists from all over the world come to this National Historic Landmark site to participate in the iron pour. They arrive at the beginning of the week to create the molds that are cast during the festival. The process uses a cupola-style furnace, which is a scaled-down version of the process that had been used to produce iron by the hulking Carrie Blast Furnaces.”

Insider Tip: Make sure to arrive before 6:00 p.m. to guarantee that you’ll see part of the iron pour. The event may extend past 6:00 p.m., but they could finish their work early!

“Our largest operating furnace is capable of tapping up to 1,000 pounds of iron each tap. Our metal arts staff, who lead the iron pour, are skilled metal artists and craftsmen with a combined 40+ years of experience in foundry work. Our iron pours require 20 to 30 participants to manage all aspects of the operation,” McGinnis said.

“The metal-casting community nationwide is a close-knit group of enthusiasts,” McGinnis continued. “They often travel to numerous locations each year to participate in iron-casting projects, large and small. As the program has grown at Rivers of Steel, the Carrie Furnaces have become one of those destinations, joining established metal-casting hubs like Sloss Furnaces in Alabama; Salem Art Works in Salem, New York; and the Metal Museum in Memphis; among others.”

One of the artists joining in is Jay Elias. Elias runs the Evolution Arts Studio in Detroit, Michigan—a studio that uses the metal-casting process as a form of therapy, focusing on veterans and formerly incarcerated individuals. As a veteran, Elias struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and found a recovery process through art and metal working. He interned with Rivers of Steel this past summer and developed work focused on his experiences battling PTSD. His studio thrives on the holistic approach of art and therapy and offers free workshops for veterans. Be sure to check out his newly installed sculpture “Unfinished Business” located in the Iron Garden this year!

For those enticed by hot metal who would like to have a more personal experience, aluminum pours will also take place. As part of their Festival of Combustion experience, event-goers can carve a scratch mold, which is then cast—transformed into a glistening square of aluminum art! Guests spend a few minutes carving a creative design and then watch as molten aluminum is poured into the molds. After it cools, they have an artistic souvenir to take home. Insider Tip: The aluminum pours happen between 1:00 and 6:00 p.m., or until the scratch molds are gone, so stop by earlier in the day!

A woman lifts her phone to photograph the Iron Garden.

Insider Tip: Don’t miss out on a walk through the Iron Garden. Stop in before 6:00 p.m.—Penn State Master Gardeners, interpretive iron plaques, and text panels for the sculptures all offer ways to learn more about the natural garden.

Casting the Iron Garden

In October of 2014, something momentous happened. For the first time in more than 30 years, iron was created at the Carrie Blast Furnaces. The event was called Casting the Iron Garden, and now, ten years on, Rivers of Steel is celebrating this anniversary as part of the Festival of Combustion.

The Iron Garden, as it’s now known, is an area along the eastern border of the landmark site. During the active years of the mill, it housed a structure and additional ore yard. During the intervening decades, after the building was demolished and before Rivers of Steel began managing the site, this area began to be reclaimed by nature, and seeds sprouted from the holes that remained from the removed foundation. Rivers of Steel’s approach was to apply a light touch in cultivating the site and to provide interpretation of the space. The project grew through a partnership with landscape ethicist Rick Darke and the Penn State Master Gardeners. (Read Growing the Iron Garden for the full origin story.)

Then, ten years ago, this creative collaboration of gentle gardening expanded with the addition of gardener Addy Smith-Reiman and her sculptor-husband Josh Reiman to the project. The two artists shared Rivers of Steel’s desire to honor the resiliency of nature as it reclaimed the land in a postindustrial habitat.

Addy Smith-Reiman, with her background in landscape architecture, has been engaging in creative projects celebrating local identities and shared histories for more than 20 years. Josh Reiman’s work has been exhibited worldwide; he’s known for sculpture, film, video, and photography.

Collaborating with Rivers of Steel and Penn State Master Gardeners, Smith-Reiman and Reiman designed and cast iron podiums to be placed along the walking trail through the garden space. Each iron installation revealed a raised drawing of some variety of plant or animal life that resides in the shadow of Carrie Blast Furnaces. As the first items cast on-site since the closing of the furnace in 1982, they represent a significant first step in bringing iron casting back to Carrie.

A white man in a black hoodie and a white woman in a fall blazer look down at the cast iron plaques in a garden space.

Visitors to the 2023 Festival of Combustion read from the cast iron interpretive podium created in 2014.

Addy Smith-Reiman reflected, “Carrie is an inspiration for many: artists, historians, and even gardeners. Ten years ago, it was fertile ground (pun intended) for a Master Gardener class to learn about ruderal vegetation and the urban wilds that consumed the landscape. Working from Rick Darke’s initial survey of the site, ten volunteers surveyed over months the ephemeral and opportunistic plants around the Carrie Furnace grounds. To have this data materialize in the plaques, utilizing the historic material of site (iron), and catalyzing the metal arts program to produce the work, the project aptly materialized as The Iron Garden.”

“It is exciting to return, ten years later, to see how the vegetation has changed and how the shift in programming allows plants to now share space with the growing sculpture garden,” she continued.

To mark the anniversary, the Master Gardeners will be stationed throughout the Iron Garden during the festival to help interpret the space, while Smith-Reiman and Reiman will help lead the iron-casting workshop offered by Rivers of Steel in the week leading up to the Festival of Combustion and will participate in the big pour the day of.

Festival goers make their way through the Ore Yard.

Insider Tip: Self-guided tours are available throughout the earlier part of the day, so plan your tour time around other timed activities that you are looking to do.

Tours of the Carrie Blast Furnaces

In addition to the self-guided tours of the Iron Garden, this year Rivers of Steel is also offering self-guided Industrial Tours. This self-paced tour route through the landmark site will include tour guides stationed at various locations, allowing guests to engage with them along the way. As guided tours have always quickly sold out in the past, this new format will accommodate as many event-goers as are interested, in addition to giving them more flexibility in how they spend their day. Additionally, an Ask a Tour Guide information tent will be located near the hub of the activities.

Six men in hard hats and safety gear work a large power hammer.

A crew with the Center for Metal Arts in Johnstown work together using a large power hammer.

Industrial Arts Demonstrations

Beyond the iron pour and tours, the demonstrations are always a crowd favorite at the Festival of Combustion. This year new participants include the Center for Metal Arts and artist Talon Smith.

The Center for Metal Arts is an educational program housed at the historic Cambria Iron & Steel forge shop in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Their mission is to renovate and refurbish historic power hammers and tooling to make them available to be seen by the greater forging community and used by qualified professional blacksmiths—and they will bring a power hammer to the festival! Although it won’t be as large as the one in the photo above, it will certainly make an impression.

This year will bring a bonus demonstration—by twilight, ceramic artist Talon Smith will partake in a performative wood firing. The performance centers around a small wood kiln. Attendees of the event are invited to engage with the artist and their crew to ask questions about the process as it takes place and witness its glowing result revealed at dusk.

Smith—who identifies as a native Yinzer, has a studio in Polish Hill and a wood kiln in Ligonier, Pennsylvania—describes this wood firing as a performance that celebrates the narratives of our environments and how they change over time. In the context of Carrie, the landscape where the former iron mill is situated has witnessed extreme changes. Over eons, the slow erosion of the Allegheny Plateau created the Mon Valley. The molten years stretched for nearly a century, and the now-silent sentinel hovers as a reminder of generations of workers.

a portrait of an artist by lit by the glow of a fire

The artist Talon Smith is illuminated from the glow of their kiln.

“Wood firing is a process that demonstrates the combined efforts of individuals working towards a common goal,” Smith said. “Throughout the duration of the Festival of Combustion, a small wood kiln containing one sculpture will be fired and brought to temperature. At peak temperature—around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit—the petals of the kiln will be opened to reveal a glowing sculpture of an arch. The arch mimics the landscape; it is a monolith left behind representing the narratives of our environments.”

Beyond the symbolism, the warm glow of the revealed sculpture will light up for the crowd just prior to the annual fireworks show.

In addition to the new demonstrations, perennial favorites will return, including glassblowing with The Pittsburgh Glass Center, welding with Patrick Camut Fabrication, and numerous blacksmiths working alongside Rivers of Steel staff.

Young children work together on clay sculpture.

Insider Tip: Don’t let the hands-on activities be just for the kids. Carve a scratch mold or make your own penny pendant!

American Crafts

If you desire to create your own crafts, wind your way through an assortment of hands-on activities. Mosaics with The Ruins Project, jewelry making with Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media, raku-fired ceramics with Ton Pottery, STEAM crafts with Assemble PGH, Guild on the Go with Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, and a Punk Rock Corner all vie for creative exploration.

“The Punk Rock Corner is a collaboration between LIGHT Educational Initiative and Rivers of Steel’s Graffiti Arts program,” said Chris McGinnis. “We’re excited to offer hands-on activities, including graffiti art, patches, zines, and pin making.”

Now in its third year, the Heritage Craft Tent, presented by West Overton Village, is a festival within the festival that explores American heritage traditions, including the tastiest of all heritage crafts: rye whiskey distilling!

“West Overton is excited to participate in the Festival of Combustion for a third year,” said Aaron Hollis, co-executive director of West Overton Village. “As the 2024 sponsoring partner for the Heritage Craft Tent, we look forward to offering engaging opportunities for visitors young and old.”

A man and woman stand behind a table with historical objects and a tablecloth that reads West Overton.

Insider Tip: For those who imbibe, make sure to try a sample of West Overton’s Monongahela Rye.

The historical organization’s educational distillery revived the tradition of making whiskey at West Overton Village for the first time since Prohibition. Their varieties of rye whiskeys, including a Monongahela Rye, will be available to adults for tastings. Adults can also learn about their new whiskey heritage center, while the younger set is engaged with interactive activities.

“We are grateful for another opportunity to continue our partnership with Rivers of Steel,” Hollis continued.

Other hands-on happenings under the Heritage Craft Tent include activities by Rivers of Steel’s other heritage partners: Touchstone Center for Crafts, the Bradford House Historical Association, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, and the Society for the Preservation of the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka.

Insider Tip: Get a head start on holiday shopping by supporting local makers.

Crafts are not limited to the hands-on variety at the Festival of Combustion; more than a dozen regional artisans are offering their creations in the makers’ marketplace. From ciders and sundries to upcycled car parts and art prints, there is a variety of wares to peruse!

A split image showing musicians on stage. and a flame performer.

Insider Tip: Check the event schedule if there is a specific performance that you don’t want to miss.

Live Music and Performances

And what would a festival be without entertainment? Beyond the metal pours, demonstrations, crafts, and shopping, there is even more to see.

On the music stage, Ames Harding and the Mirage, Tom Breiding and Union Railroad, and The Polkamaniacs will keep festival-goers entertained, in between sets by DJ Zombo.

A chronicler of small-town America, locally based Breiding said, “Union Railroad will play a set of music that pays homage to our region’s great industrial heritage. Rivers of Steel is such an important link to that heritage, and this festival is my favorite celebration of the year in Pittsburgh.” Breiding’s music lyrically lends understanding to the worlds of coalfields, mines, and mills.

Pop-up performances by Lovely Lady Lydia Artistry offer fire, flame, and other circus arts throughout the evening.

Fireworks over the Carrie Blast Furnaces

Insider Tip: The fireworks begin at 8:30 p.m. and end by 9:00 p.m.

Food, Finale, and More

If all of this has worked up an appetite, food trucks will tickle a variety of tastes. Farmer x Baker, Pita My Shawarma, Rogue BBQ, Street Fries 4ever, Tango Food Truck, and Taqueria El Pastorcito will be on-site. Craft beer, sponsored by Oskar Blues and Vecenies Distributing, and cocktails will be on hand to add a dash of flavor to this incredible ambiance. Plus, sales of beverages directly support Rivers of Steel and its programmatic and historical preservation efforts at the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

For the adventurous in the crowd, Xpogo will provide instruction and free-to-use pogo sticks for all skill levels and ages, and KSD Studios is offering affordable tattoos.

A day celebrating the innovation and artistry of our region can be capped only by the colorful combustion of a dazzling fireworks display. The fireworks finale takes place from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m., offering an epic end to a memorable day.

Presented By

The Festival of Combustion is simply an experience like no other, making it a spectacular autumn adventure. Plus, with an all-inclusive admission price of $20 for adults and no cost for kids under age 18, it is supremely affordable and family friendly. This is made possible by the financial and in-kind support from our sponsors.

“Rivers of Steel is grateful to our presenting sponsor, U.S. Steel, for their unwavering support of the Festival of Combustion and our broader community initiatives,” said Rivers of Steel’s CEO Augie Carlino. “Their investment plays a key role in preserving Pittsburgh’s rich history as the steel center of the world, ensuring that the story of our industrial legacy continues to inspire and educate. Together, we are celebrating the industrial heritage that forged Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania and helped shape the nation.”

Rivers of Steel is also grateful for the support of West Overton Village, sponsors of the Heritage Craft Tent, for their underwriting contributions for this event.

Rivers of Steel is thankful for NEXTpittsburgh, who is the exclusive media sponsor for the 2024 Festival of Combustion; Jackson Welding Supply Co., Inc.; Oscar Blues; and Vecenies Distributing—all of whom are additional fiscal sponsors, and TMS International who provides in-kind support.

Beyond these partners, Rivers of Steel recognizes the event would not be all that it is without the support of our programmatic collaborators.

“The Festival of Combustion has grown so much over the years, and we are particularly excited to welcome more than 50 collaborators in 2024,” said Chris McGinnis. “So much of what makes this event special comes from the many friends and partners who bring their unique and creative work to Carrie Blast Furnaces each year!”

That said, the magic of the day is contributed by the thousands of folks from southwestern Pennsylvania and beyond who join us to marvel in the fiery spectacles and immense talent of our region’s artists, makers, and builders. They truly make this a celebration of industrial arts and American crafts!

A couple, each holding a beer, looks at vendor merch.

Insider Tip: Guests 21+ who are seeking to imbibe, should stop at the I.D. Check to get a bracelet before getting in line to purchase beverages.

Tickets and Information

The Festival of Combustion is hosted by Rivers of Steel at the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark, located at 801 Carrie Furnace Blvd., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15218.

The event is from 1:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 5, 2024. Some hands-on activities and demonstrations conclude at 6:00 p.m., as activities shift from the Central Courtyard to the Western Courtyard and more performances begin. This year, no reservations are needed for tours, but folks looking to carve a scratch mold should participate earlier in the day, as supplies may run out. All tours and activities are included in the ticket price.

Food is available for purchase, and visitors may want to budget for marketplace discoveries. Also, those looking to purchase adult beverages will need to stop at the I.D. Check to receive a bracelet before going to the beer and cocktails tent. Festival of Combustion T-shirts and other commemorative merchandise are available from Rivers of Steel at the gift shop near the entrance gates.

General admission tickets can be purchased here for $20 in advance for adults. Kids are free; however, tickets must be reserved. Free parking is available on-site, with additional spaces reserved for those with limited mobility.

About Rivers of Steel

Founded on the principles of heritage development, community partnership, and a reverence for the region’s natural and shared resources, Rivers of Steel strengthens the economic and cultural fabric of western Pennsylvania by fostering dynamic initiatives and transformative experiences.

Rivers of Steel showcases the artistry and innovation of our region’s industrial and cultural heritage by offering unique experiences via tours, workshops, exhibitions, festivals, and more. Rivers of Steel supports economic revitalization throughout the eight counties of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area by working to deepen community partnerships, promote heritage tourism, and preserve local recreational and cultural resources for future generations.

Julie Silverman is a museum educator, tour facilitator, and storyteller of astronomy and history for various Pittsburgh-area organizations, including Rivers of Steel. A Chatham University 2020 MFA graduate, her writing is most often found under the byline of JL Silverman. Occasionally, under the name of Julia, she has been seen on TV.

Read her previous story about West Overton’s new Whiskey Heritage Center here.

Sep 06 2024

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An ink and watercolor image of the Carrie Furnaces from the Ore Yard

Visions of Carrie: Gledaj! Sketching Workshops

By Carly McCoy Blog

Gledaj! sketching workshops explore Maxo Vanka’s perspective. Photo by Lynne Squilla.

Community Spotlight—Gledaj! Sketching Workshops

The Community Spotlight series features the efforts of Rivers of Steel’s partner organizations, along with collaborative partnerships, that reflect the diversity and vibrancy of the communities within the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area. Today’s story explores the Gledaj! Sketching Workshops that capture the spirit behind the inspiration Maxo Vanka took from Pittsburgh’s vistas.

By Lynne Squilla, Contributing Writer

Visions of Carrie

On a hot, sunny day in late July 2024, a group of 30 people gathered at the towering Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark. Holding sketchbooks, easels, brushes, pencils, and pens, the group listened to some inspiration from local artists then quietly dispersed across the grounds, each looking around intently before settling down to create their own visions of this remarkable site.

This was the second Carrie Furnaces Gledaj! Sketching Session since 2023, conducted by the Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka (SPMMMV). It has become a happy collaboration between the Society and Rivers of Steel, sponsored in part by a Rivers of Steel Mini-Grant. The images these visitors created were diverse and breathtaking, capturing the power, beauty, and spirit of this National Historic Landmark. The experience tied together two of our area’s important industrial heritage sites, raising awareness of these treasures and their impact on the region and the world.

A figure sits in a camp chair with a sketchbook looking up at Furnace #7.

Sketching at Carrie. Photo by Anna Doering.

Croatian-born artist Maximilian “Maxo” Vanka was a classically trained artist who constantly sketched birds, animals, people, situations—and industrial structures. These Gledaj! sketching sessions were inspired by his bold murals emblazoned on the walls of St. Nicholas Croatian Church in Millvale.

“Maxo Vanka loved the grit and muscularity of Pittsburgh,” said Anna Doering, executive director of SPMMMV, pointing out that he first came here in 1935 and drew the dramatic landscape of factories and furnaces, as well as bridges, rivers, and the then newly constructed Cathedral of Learning.

Recruited by St. Nicholas’ priest, Father Albert Zagar, to fill the blank walls of his Croatian-Catholic church on a hill in Millvale, Vanka crafted 25 murals in two great bursts of energy in 1937 and 1941. They are a mix of religious imagery and poignant scenes of life for the Croatian immigrants who came to toil in Pittsburgh’s coal mines, iron furnaces, and steel mills.

“Look at The Immigrant Mother Gives Her Son for Industry, and there are blast furnaces in the background,” Doering reflected, referencing the murals. “Also in The Simple Family Meal. And Injustice: the flames at the feet of that figure [can be compared to] the flames of industry. Behind Father Zagar on the altar mural, you can see smokestacks and downtown Pittsburgh.”

A priest on his knees gestures toward a group of five workers. Some hold pickaxes, one holds a lunch pail and another holds a church.

Maxo Vanka’s mural showing Father Zagar, Croatian immigrants, and smokestacks of Pittsburgh. Courtesy of SPMMMV.

“So, tying the murals to Carrie and Rivers of Steel,” she continued, “the synergy is that both organizations are trying to preserve these parts of Pittsburgh’s history: its industry, its past, its workers. We’re telling very similar stories about the immigrant experience.”

The original concept for the sketching sessions came from a meeting between Doering and Pittsburgh-born architect John Martine, who traveled Europe drawing landmarks and landscapes. He also has a prestigious solo art career, along with connections to historical and preservation organizations. Martine remains involved in the sketching sessions that have featured other Pittsburgh sites and neighborhoods, with guidance from other local painters, architects, graffiti and mural artists, and educators.

Rick Landesberg, founder of Landesberg Design and retired faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design, led the Carrie sketching session in 2023, and in 2024 he was joined by designer, artist, and CMU professor, Laura Vinchesi.

a man holds up a sketch with the furnace behind him

Rick Landesberg at the Carrie Blast Furnaces. Photo courtesy of Rick Landesberg.

“I have always kept a sketchbook,” says Landesberg. “It is an observational tool that helps you look. So, even if you only draw moderately well, it forces you to look carefully at things. The energy of observing goes to the page. How often do you really look at something for six minutes? You sure do when you’re drawing. You own it!”

This concept of intense observation closely parallels Vanka’s approach. His mantra was the Croatian word Gledaj!, which translates to Look! See! The term became the theme for SPMMMV’s sketching sessions, as well as the title of a past collaboration with Rivers of Steel at its Bost Building in 2023: Gledaj! The Gaze of Maxo Vanka. More than 130 of Vanka’s early drawings and preparatory sketches for the murals were on display.

In particular, Vanka’s views of Pittsburgh’s rivers, bridges, and industry seemed appropriately placed in the Bost Building, which received National Historic Landmark recognition for its role in the1892 labor lockout and strike most commonly referred to as the Battle of Homestead.

Landesberg was impressed by how the Carrie sketch participants, who had a range of skill levels, took Vanka’s Gledaj! message to heart, keenly studying the sights before drawing them.

For Shaun Slifer, a multidisciplinary artist, founder of Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, and creative director for the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, it was his first visit to Carrie, though he had been aware of it and had visited the Vanka murals multiple times.

“I was doing a lot of Gledaj-ing,” he laughed. “It was a great way to spend a Sunday. I had no idea what any of the structures were for, not having grown up here with the mills. I drew this high-up room with corrugated walls, like a tree house. It did make me want to take a tour of the site to learn more!”

a landscape sketch in a small notebook spanning two pages of the furnace and surrounding buildings

A sketch by Sue Mals. Photo courtesy of Sue Mals.

Two-time sketching session participant and retired engineer Sue Mals added, “The more you quiet your mind, the more you see. While sketching, I did think about all of the many feet that trod before where I was seated to do my sketching. It was an interesting dichotomy that it was rather quiet with just some bird song in the air while I was sketching, whereas when the Carrie Blast Furnaces were operational, a loud cacophony of sounds would have been in the air.”

What emerged from the four-hour sessions were bold charcoal portraits of the furnaces, fine-lined ink pen renditions, soft watercolors and pastel visions, playful crayon depictions, and simple felt marker silhouettes. Some of the representations were even reminiscent of Vanka’s sketching technique.

“The styles that came out of it were quite broad,” noted Landesberg. “I was surprised at how many brought watercolors and brushes. Some folks really stretched their medium. The work of one artist—Gideon Kossoff’s charcoal drawings—were really loose, really active. He went at it with great energy, though he is, in person, a really soft-spoken guy.” Many of the participants focused on the behemoth Furnaces #6 and #7, while others like Slifer zeroed in on some small detail of a gear or bolt or tree nestled within the massive structures. In 2023, one of the artists even placed paper on the surface of one of the edifices and made a textured rubbing.

a sketch of a crack in a concrete wall with detritus

A sketch by Shaun Slifer. Photo courtesy of Shaun Slifer.

“I got interested in seeing the plants growing up through the slag and rust. I drew a crumbling wall,” Slifer explained. “The place was eerie but wonderful.”

Charles Lucas had worked in U.S. Steel’s Open Hearth #4 as a college student and currently takes commissions to paint religious icons. It was his second session at Carrie, and he felt a connection between the industrial remnants and Vanka’s images of workers: “There’s the image of the fallen worker and the women weeping for him. That’s the worker—the ‘grunt’—that’s who some would say worked at Carrie. But they weren’t. Those guys were amazing and knew how to do their jobs.”

“Carrie is a strange and magical place,” Landesberg said. “It’s peaceful now, like a cemetery, but a violent place when it was active. It has a drama to it, though now sitting still and silent. And just in sheer physical, graphic terms, it is an amazing place.”

a dark charcoal drawing of furnace #7 and the gas washer

A charcoal image of furnace #7 and the gas washer sketched by Gideon Kossoff. Photo by Lynne Squilla.

Just as Rivers of Steel has done with the Carrie Blast Furnaces, the Bost Building, and the Pump House, SPMMMV works to preserve the Vanka murals and their stories inside St. Nicholas Croatian Church in Millvale by constantly devising innovative programming that appeals to an ever-broadening audience. The partnership with Rivers of Steel has allowed both organizations to reach visitors who might not otherwise know about these sites or the Pittsburgh history and universal lessons they represent.

“With Gledaj! helped by the Mini-Grants, SPMMMV can launch new programs and ideas, test them out as outreach, which helps us to establish an idea and make it sustaining or find new support for these efforts,” Doering explained. “We can also reach out to other organizations, and having this matching component is always vital to show donors new reasons to give.”

Doering was pleased by how much the groups enjoyed the sessions in 2023 and 2024. “People loved getting out to places they’d previously never been to, getting together with new people with similar interests, and engaging around the Vanka murals’ stories. These timeless stories are a gift to every generation, connecting us to shared history and lived experiences that influence our region and our country today. Unique sites like these make Pittsburgh a one-of-a-kind destination.”

Slifer put it more simply: “I just thought it’s great that two organizations that I think are cool are doing something together!”

Carrie was just one location for SPMMMV’s Gledaj! Sketching Sessions. Since 2023, the program also brought groups to Pittsburgh’s South Side and Polish Hill neighborhoods, as well as Allegheny Cemetery. On September 8 there will be a session at Allegheny Commons in the North Side, and on October 6 inside St. Nicholas Croatian Church and Millvale environs to sketch from the murals themselves, along with the surrounding postindustrial neighborhood. For more information or to reserve a space in the sketching group, visit https://vankamurals.org/events-activities/sketching-sessions/.

About the Mini Grant Program

Check out Lynne’s previous article on Rivers of Steel’s new workforce development program.

Aug 07 2024

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An over the shoulder shot of several people caring notebooks in their hands, walking on a gangway towards a dock on a river with a setting sun.

Getting to Know: Shiftworks

By Carly McCoy Blog, Getting to Know

Shiftworks’ Write the Rivers workshop with Sherrie Flick explored new ways of including the public in public art. Photo by Heather Mull.

Getting to Know: Shiftworks

The Getting to Know series helps you become better acquainted with some of Rivers of Steel’s partners throughout the eight-county Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area by featuring one of our community allies. For part two of the Shiftworks series, writer Jason Vrabel examines how Shiftworks Community + Public Arts serves its mission by creating opportunities for the public to engage in creating public art.

By Jason Vrabel, on behalf of Shiftworks

Expanding the Boundaries of Public Art

More than a dozen people fanned out across the Allegheny River shoreline in search of found objects—or in this case, more commonly known as trash. This area north of Pittsburgh is marsh-like near the delta of Plum Creek, but lush and forested farther inland. Aside from two fishermen, everyone there on a Saturday morning in June arrived by kayak, a 15-minute paddle from the 10.7 Marina in Verona.

They were there to create art with Monica Cervone McElwain, one of several artists commissioned by Shiftworks Community + Public Arts to design public art tours. Taking place between summer and fall, this program includes two different kayak journeys and multiple walking tours. Combined, the events share a common goal of educating people about what public art is, what it can be, and engaging them in the process of creating it.

A group of kayakers paddle towards the confluence of Plum Creek at Allegheny River in Oakmont. Photo by Ishara Henry.

Once everyone was on land, McElwain’s instructions to the group were intentionally vague: Go explore, and bring back anything you can reuse creatively

“This is a little bit of a choose your own adventure,” McElwain said. As a multimedia artist and art teacher, McElwain says the purpose of these events, now in their second year, is to create opportunities for art making, but also for adults to play.

As a regular visitor to this area, McElwain knows that her groups will mostly find bona fide trash—a lot of pop bottles and beer cans—but more interesting objects usually turn up, like decorative metal pieces of a stair railing, or a yo-yo. “I once found a beautifully preserved deer head . . . and, of course, I made something out of it,” she said.

The returning participants amassed a pile of human-made objects, like a rubber wheel and some river glass, as well as more natural discoveries like feathers and branches. One participant stayed out on the water and finally returned with two large sheets of crumpled metal, weathered by water and sun. To help with assembly, McElwain brought along fishing line, wire, and other art supplies.

Turtle Cove is only a few miles from the city border but feels much farther. Serene and pastoral, evidence of the built environment is scarce—except, that is, for River’s Edge, a new housing development on the other side of Plum Creek.

Most of the participants gravitated toward a sculpture McElwain had started previously, partially constructed with white PVC pipe. McElwain didn’t know for sure where the pipe came from but said it was “probably something that came from all that building across the creek.”

McElwain says trash is always present, but the inlet isn’t overrun with it. Even though cleaning up Turtle Cove is part of every trip she takes there (she hauls away as much as she can that is not “creatively exciting”), she isn’t heavy-handed about the environmental message. Instead, she wants her groups to pay attention to the natural environment and use it in their creative process.

“Seeing and hearing birds, and being in the sun with the wind hitting you helps pull in that natural environment when you’re creating,” McElwain said.

A woman in a tank shirt and trucker hat arranges something on a post.

Monica Cervone McElwain creates an assemblage with found objects. Photo by Ishara Henry.

An Evolving Process

Previously known as the Office for Public Art, Shiftworks can be found where art intersects with civic design in the Pittsburgh region. The organization’s mission to catalyze change through civically engaged, artist-led projects in public spaces took on greater urgency during the pandemic. As social isolation was taking root, Shiftworks partnered with Riverlife (an organization whose mission is to activate Pittsburgh’s riverfronts) to encourage safe social gathering outdoors. The immediate result was a series of commissioned public art projects along the Allegheny River and Allegheny Landing.

This led to the formation of the Pittsburgh Creative Corps, a pool of local artists who can be called upon whenever new public art opportunities arise. More than 100 artists are now part of the Corps, some of whom have been invited by Shiftworks and its partners to propose and create their own projects.

Rachel Klipa, Shiftworks’ program manager for education, says these tours are educational and less intensive than many of the organization’s other programs, which often involve multiyear commitments between artists and the communities in which they work. These summer events are intended to engage artists who can create new opportunities for the public to participate in the making of art without a lot of constraints.

“We want to let people determine their own experience,” Klipa said. “We want to let them see what they want and create what they want.”

A Walk & Write with Sherrie Flick, (far right)/ Photo by Heather Mull Photography.

Walk & Write

Sherrie Flick is another member of the Corps who also curates experiential art events for Shiftworks. Her tours are by foot—mostly through parks and neighborhoods—and focus on the art of writing. Flick sometimes leads the tours herself but often collaborates with other writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

As an instructor at Chatham University and an accomplished author (with a novel and several short-story collections to her name), Flick designed the Walk & Write tours to spark creativity through movement and observation. Whether touring the built environment of downtown Pittsburgh or the natural landscape of Frick Park, participants are provided with writing prompts along the way. Tour guides may relay their own personal histories with the site or read from their own work to inspire writing within the group.

This summer, while exploring the physical space between the Ohio River and the shuttered Western Penitentiary, Flick’s co-host Sarah Shotland led participants along a trail adjacent to the neighborhoods of Manchester and Marshall-Shadeland. Officially known as State Correctional Institution—Pittsburgh, the penitentiary’s future has been a recent topic of debate. Those who see its historic architectural value want to preserve and reuse the structure, but others want to demolish a menacing symbol of incarceration and reuse only the land.

As an author who once taught writing to inmates inside Western Penitentiary, Shotland prompted participants to think about space—inside and outside. By juxtaposing the massive structure with the Ohio River just beyond the prison walls, tour participants moved through the space in between, while being prompted to consider the tension between confinement and freedom.

Many of us know how a short walk can help clear our minds. Beyond the scientific evidence that indicates we think differently when we are moving, Flick says we become better observers of our surroundings when we are passing through them. Flick teaches that good writing comes from keen observation, so to improve our writing, we must first improve our observing.

“Observation connects us to setting, which connects us to objects, which connects us to characters, and so on,” Flick said, noting that good observation skills are important to writers of any genre. Furthermore, “writing from a place of observation helps us write without judgment”—something that experienced and novice writers alike can learn over time.

“The main idea is you’re reacting to the observed world,” Flick said. By guiding people through a familiar place in a creative way, their perception of that place can change.

Walk & Write tours are designed for all kinds of writers at any level of ability, including those who don’t think of themselves as writers at all. Participants who have chosen to share their writing with their groups have written some great things, Flick says, but merely sharing observations about the places they visit can be just as valuable.

What is public art? How is it made, and by whom?

It’s generally understood that art, in a broad sense, includes music, dance, and other forms of creative expression, but people often associate public art with static objects such as sculptures and murals. While traditional forms of public art make valuable contributions to the public realm, broadening our collective understanding of what public art can be is part of Shiftworks’ mission.

“Public art is art that exists in the public realm, however briefly,” Klipa said. “Sometimes it may only be experienced by whoever is present at a particular place and moment in time.”

Shiftworks’ civically engaged art programs have supported artists whose work expands the boundaries of public art, often through ephemeral and experiential elements. Social gatherings, yoga sessions, theatrical performances, sewing, and cooking have all been foundational to Shiftworks-supported projects throughout the years. Because that kind of work requires deep community engagement and extensive training, and provides opportunities to only a limited number of artists, Klipa wanted the summer series to present opportunities for new audiences and artists to work in the public realm on a short-term basis.

“Public art doesn’t have to be an object,” Flick said. “The art ends up being all the written pieces the participants have drafted. I’m the conduit. They’re creating these little pieces that they can carry on and continue with.”

While the works of art made during McElwain’s kayak tours are objects, they’re ephemeral ones. The artists can no longer see their work after they’ve left the island, and because the inlet occasionally floods, the work will be washed away eventually.

In addition to creating more opportunities for the public to make art, Shiftworks has been equally committed to the ongoing development of the artists, by moving away from traditional public art walking tours to commissioning artists to design experiences in the public realm. To promote more artist-designed projects, Klipa says that Pittsburgh Creative Corps artists (even those with little to significant public engagement experience) are candidates for future tour commissions.

McElwain’s project was born from her own family kayak trips to Turtle Cove. (“Turtle Cove” isn’t an official place, but a made-up name given by an acquaintance of McElwain.) She had recently painted a mural at the 10.7 Marina when she got the idea to take the traditional art walking tour concept out into the rivers. Walk & Write’s origin was similar. Flick had been involved with Shiftworks tours of public art and architecture downtown since 2017; they were educational, but the overall experience was limited to discussions about existing art created by someone else.

Since then, Flick has allowed the Walk & Write tours to evolve into the participatory form they take today, and she appreciates the freedom she has to design or modify each one. “They’re different every time and not done by rote,” she said.

Sometimes they’re different in unexpected ways. Last year, a tour in Frick Park that didn’t account for early nightfall nearly had to be rescheduled until Flick proposed going forward in the dark—with headlamps. Klipa said this was a “great solution” and an example of both Shiftworks’ flexibility and the artist’s ability to adapt. Flick said the “night hike” was such a great experience, that this year’s park tour in September will not begin until dark.

Kayakers line up by the river with paddles.

Erin Mallea’s Sycamore Island tour. Photo by Ishara Henry.

No Beginning or End

The summer public art series embodies Shiftworks’ goal of helping our region understand the value of public art and the unique contributions of artists who work in the public realm. For McElwain, tours to Turtle Cove don’t really have a beginning or end, and the artwork her groups create will likely change by the time she returns. Because it’s not uncommon for visitors to alter the art, her next group will inherit whatever is there.

Already thinking ahead to next year, McElwain is considering ways to engage with other visitors—possibly through signage, notebooks, or QR codes—but doesn’t want to dictate what others do with whatever they find there.

“You may not understand it, but just be respectful” is the message she wants to convey to those who happen upon the artwork. After all, McElwain remarked with a laugh, she doesn’t interfere with fire pits left behind by “the kids who make their bonfires.” But she does recycle their beer cans.

Beyond whoever commissions or creates it, the most intriguing aspect of public art is who it belongs to.

Getting Involved

This year, Shiftworks’ public art events will continue through October. Artist Erin Mallea will lead two more kayak tours—to Sycamore Island, one of the few currently undeveloped islands in Allegheny County. There will also be three more Walk & Write events. A writing tour led by Nancy Krygowski will take place in Greenfield, and Flick will lead the September “night hike” in Schenley Park. Flick has also collaborated with local archivist and historian Jennie Benford to design a Walk & Write tour of Homewood Cemetery, which will occur later in October. An event schedule and registration information can be found here.

Derek Reese, Shiftworks’ manager of artist services, holds open office hours twice a week. Artists interested in working in the public realm can schedule in-person or virtual appointments through Shiftworks’ events page.

About Shiftworks

If you’d like to learn more about Shiftworks, read about their working relationship with communities in creating public art in part one of the Getting to Know: Shiftworks series.

Jul 26 2024

Love0

A black and white team photo of a baseball club wearing jerseys that say Carrie with men in suits and flat brim hats standing with the players.

The Golden Age of Carrie Baseball

By Carly McCoy Blog

The Golden Age of Carrie Baseball

Barney Terrell traces the origins of Carrie Furnaces’ baseballs teams from the earliest mention in 1895 through their final season in 1923 in this article about the players and the recreational culture that supported them.

The Carrie Nine & the Industrial Baseball Leagues

In the 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s, baseball was everywhere in the United States. Between 1876 and 1901, no fewer than six major leagues fielded teams. “Fast” minor leagues with high-quality teams proliferated to feed the increasing hunger for recreation and competition. Every town had its own ball club, and many business owners sponsored teams of amateur players. Industrial leagues were common in the Monongahela River Valley, serving not only as a source of pride for the mills, but also as a source of recreation and release in a time of brutal working conditions.

The Carrie Furnaces were no exception. June 22, 1895, saw the first mention of a Carrie Furnace ball club in local newspapers in a 17 – 14 defeat at the hands of the Consolidated Steel and Wire team. This Carrie Nine—a name referencing the number of players in the starting lineup—was likely brought together for weekend games to play against nearby mills in Braddock and amateur nines from Rankin and Swissvale.

A newspaper clipping reporting on sports.

The Pittsburgh Press, June 24, 1895 pg. 9

Between 1895 and 1907, the Carrie Furnaces likely had a team every summer. These teams scheduled games themselves and sometimes passed a hat through the crowd to take up a collection for the players. While not a part of established leagues, these teams served to promote athleticism, public goodwill, and comradery among industries, their employees, and rapidly expanding cities. Baseball was a sport where an individual could excel, but the outcome of a game was usually decided by the efforts of the team. Even the most uneducated, poorest, or least experienced players could make their mark by superior play. The Homestead Steel Works operated its own baseball league, occasionally supporting a dozen teams, each from a different part of the mill.

The Carrie Furnace Baseball Club & the Twilight League

In 1908, the Carrie Furnace club burst back onto the amateur scene in Pittsburgh, posting a 16 – 5 record between May and October. The team was dubbed The Millers in honor of their starting center fielder, H.V. Miller, who was a member of the chemical division at Carrie and performed testing on metal samples and gas. As the caption of the following picture points out, most of the club was drawn from the offices and chemical division at Carrie. The club played on Friday and Saturday afternoons, generally tracing the schedule of the Homestead Business Men’s League. This league was a “twilight” league for several years, fielding teams of grocers, plumbers, city employees, and office workers from the Homestead Works. Games were played at 5:30 p.m., meaning that all of the players were professionals during regular business hours. The majority of the workers at Carrie or Homestead worked six-day weeks of 72 hours or more and could perhaps catch a few innings of the games after their shift ended. Club backers, such as chief clerk Thomas Kenney, supplied uniforms and equipment and split scheduling duties with Theodore Hirsch, the assistant superintendent at Carrie. Hirsch’s son, Theodore Jr., was a student at Pitt as well as an apprentice in the electrical department at the Homestead Works.

The Millers were led on the field by two players: their namesake, Miller, and Fred Hosmer. Miller was a strong-hitting and superb center fielder. Fred Hosmer split his time between the outfield and third base. In three games for which box scores exist, Hosmer handled 15 chances at third base without an error—an exceptional defensive performance!

Gloves were common in baseball for over a decade by 1908, but most games were played on poorly kept fields and often extended into near darkness. Those factors, combined with the discoloration of the single ball used throughout the game, reflect the challenges in the game that one might not consider as factors today.

A newspaper clipping that includes the photo of the baseball team described in the above image.

The Pittsburgh Press, October 11, 1908 page 22

At least two in Carrie’s club played college-level baseball before working at the iron mill and were the strength of the club. Hosmer played while studying chemistry in Maine. In the above photo, Philip Marks is mentioned as “formerly with Washington-Jefferson College team.” To be a truly competitive team in this time period, the most important positions were the pitcher and catcher. A pitcher who could throw quality curve balls and off-speed pitches (variously called in/out shoots and drops) gave a team a leg up. If one of those pitchers was on the team, however, you needed a catcher who could handle the speed and movement of the pitches. With Hosmer and Marks, Carrie had both. In Joseph Watters, they even had an extra catcher as good as Hosmer.

The next season, however, Marks left to take a job at National Tube in McKeesport, where he managed a team in the West Penn Amateur League. Watters also did not play for Carrie the next year, and the Carrie team disbanded in late August after having difficulty scheduling games.

The career of Philip Marks did not end at National Tube, however. He decided to go into medicine and spent nearly 30 years as the director of Pittsburgh’s Bureau of Infectious Diseases.

A newspaper clipping with the headline "City's Ex-Health Guardian Dies"

Pittsburgh Press, Feb 20, 1955 Page 10

A Return to the Amateur Scene with the Tri-Borough League

Carrie team baseball returned for a third time to the amateur scene in 1919. That year, teams from Braddock, Rankin, and Homestead formed the Tri-borough League. “Tri-borough” was a commonly used name for any amateur league in the Pittsburgh district—and the 1919 edition was at least the fourth since 1900. Pittsburgh, like much of the United States, saw an explosion of amateur and semipro teams in the years following World War I. By 1925, according to Rob Ruck in Sandlot Seasons, Pittsburgh featured more than 200 semipro and amateur teams in dozens of leagues.

The 1919 team was one of the strongest teams in the Tri-borough League. Ross Calihan, a chemist, played for both the 1908 Carrie team and the 1919 edition. He was about 35 years old in 1919 and appeared in only five games. The leader on the field for the team was Eddie Brannagan. Eddie and his brother Joe played for Carrie, while one of their other brothers, Tom, played for North Braddock. Eddie was a fast runner and good fielder, and led the Tri-borough League in stolen bases in 1919.

A newspaper clipping showing photos of three brothers, and an article which mentions a fourth brother.

Pittsburgh Daily Post, July 27, 1919 page 21.

The Brannagans also performed in musicals and plays at the Carnegie Theatre in Braddock, while Joe was also a member of the Braddock Men’s Chorus. Their father played baseball in the 1880s and served as an umpire in the Oil and Iron League, where he likely saw the rise of Hall-of-Famer Rube Waddell. (George Edward “Rube” Waddell was from Butler County and played for several teams, including the Homestead Athletic Club and the Pittsburgh Pirates, in a peripatetic career. While an outstanding pitcher for six years for the Philadelphia A’s and St. Louis Browns, he is better known for chasing fire engines and appearing in vaudeville acts, according to legendary tales shared by his manager, Connie Mack.)

Besides Eddie Brannagan, Ernest Morgan was the best hitter on the team and is recorded as one of the fastest men in the league. Levi “Larry” Kilbury was called the team’s “Iron Man” by The Pittsburgh Press. On days that he was not pitching, Larry played catcher and corner outfield. Jess Cook, a machinist at Carrie, was the other main pitcher for the team. Their manager was Jim Lose, a mechanical engineer at the Furnaces who was originally from Kansas. Lose worked at Carrie for nearly 15 years and later served as executive vice president at U.S. Steel before his retirement in 1956. Larry Kilbury and Braddock’s Jess Scott were talented enough pitchers to get invitations to try out for minor league teams in Western Pennsylvania.

The Carrie Furnace club finished third in the Tri-borough League in 1919 and was invited back to play in 1920. However, Carrie lost its best pitcher in Jess Cook In their first game, Eddie Brannagan took the mound against McClintic Marshall and was torched for 11 runs. (McClintic Marshall was a large independent steel company involved in the construction of the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh and the Panama Canal locks, among other projects. Located on land adjacent to the Carrie Furnaces, it was founded in 1900 by H.H. McClintic and Charles D. Marshall with funding from Andrew Mellon.)

The 1920 Tri-borough season was short for the Carrie Furnace club. On June 18, 1920, the league cut four teams to improve the quality of play; Carrie Furnace, St. Josephs, the Swissvale Windsors, and the Korch Crescents were dropped from the league. Between them, the teams had a record of 4 wins and 15 losses. The Carrie Furnace club lost its first five games. Only one of their players, Eddie Brannigan, was snapped up by another club—the same McClintic Marshall team that hit him hard in the opening game of the season. During the next five years, the Carrie Furnace team still played games against amateur clubs on the weekends but never got back into an established amateur league. Larry Kilbury was the captain of the club in 1922 and 1923 and scheduled games for the team.

The population of Pittsburgh more than doubled between 1890 and 1920 to 588,000. Baseball was, for immigrant workers in the mills and rural migrants coming into the cities, a common touch point—an introduction of the “American Pastime” and industrialized society. The Carrie Furnace teams between 1895 and 1925 featured immigrants, men from Pittsburgh: doctors, scientists, machinists, and railway engineers. While the “golden age” of Carrie Baseball was short, it is a great reminder that each individual who worked on the site has a story all their own.

Barney Terrell is a tour guide, historian, and researcher for Rivers of Steel and is a tour facilitator at The Frick Pittsburgh. He is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, a true crime author, and a trivia host.

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Walk & Write

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No Beginning or End

Getting Involved

About Shiftworks

The Golden Age of Carrie Baseball

The Carrie Nine & the Industrial Baseball Leagues

The Carrie Furnace Baseball Club & the Twilight League

A Return to the Amateur Scene with the Tri-Borough League

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