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Cleveland Works

The Cleveland Works, the historic heart of the Cleveland steel industry, is a vast complex of steelmaking facilities on the banks of Cuyahoga River. Because of its location on Lake Erie, its numerous rail lines and its proximity to large deposits of coal and iron ore, Cleveland became a major industrial powerhouse in the late 19th century. Samuel Mather began steel production in the 1860s and by 1880, over a quarter of Cleveland's workers were employed in steel mills. The industry ebbed and flowed with the economic winds and by the end of the 20th century, steel production had been reduced to a fraction of its peak with the mills going through numerous ownership changes and bankruptcies. See a nice timeline history of steelmaking in Cleveland HERE.

These photos viewing the works from the East were taken in 2004 from a chunk of Pershing Avenue (just to the west of I-77) that used to be the approach to the Clark Avenue Bridge, a massive structure that was built in 1917 and traversed the Cuyahoga Valley with a total length of 6,687 feet (reference). The bridge was outmoded by the I-490 bridge just to the north and was demolished in 1984. The CSU library has some nice photos of the old bridge and its demolition HERE.

I'm not sure exactly what facilities these are, although the chain of ownership of the east bank plants started with Corrigan, McKinney and Company, then Republic Steel, then LTV Steel, and then ISG Steel.

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