2009
Pen and Ink
12 inches x 8 inches
Joseph Pennell was an artist working out of Philadelphia at the turn of the last century. He was a friend of James Whistler (see “Whistler’s Mother”). In May of 1881 Pennell came to this area. From the eastern tip of Sand Island, he did a watercolor of the Bethlehem Iron Company, predecessor of the Bethlehem Steel Company.
In that watercolor you will plainly see the same building as my much more recent pen on paper version: “Foundry.”
Constructed in 1867, it is one of the oldest and well-built buildings on the site—standing like an arched ruin of an Irish cathedral. At one time it was the busiest structure at the plant. At the same time Pennell did his watercolor, sixty railroads nationwide had been established. And those railroads needed track. Bethlehem Iron called this T-shaped stone building the “Rail Mill” rolling out 39 foot iron rails non-stop for the explosion of railroads and their appetite for rail.
Over the years railroading ran its course. The Rail Mill was converted into an iron foundry for iron casting. In its pits were upright molds sitting in beds of sand—where Steelworkers assigned to the Foundry operated submarine cars filled with molten iron from the furnace. Transferred to a six-foot ladle suspended on a giant hook, a crane operator would guide the ladle of molten iron and position it above each mold. Machinery would tilt the ladle forward.
The ladle-to-mold pour was like lava out of a volcano. Pictures from the time show iron hitting the top of the mold in a shower of sparks that filled the building. I knew little of this when I drew the picture.
After 122 years of steelmaking and the employment of up to 165,000 people in 1957, the once mighty No. 2 U.S. Steelmaker, Bethlehem Steel, made its last cast on November 18, 1995.
From the film “Last Cast”:
The “Steel” was an enigma to me. What went on behind the gates and guards and noise and smoke of Bethlehem Steel, with its tens of thousands of workers, I discovered long after the last furnace shut down. The chain link is gone. The site is open to anyone. Behind the old main gate and the closed Plant Patrol office (yes, the “Steel” had its own police force) sits the “Foundry.”
Parked in the lot across the street I sketched out this phenomenal bit of repurposed industrial architecture.