Bethlehem Steel: Armorer of a Nation

For more than a century, Bethlehem Steel was one of the most consequential industrial operations in the United States. What began in eighteen sixty-three as the Bethlehem Iron Company, rolling railroad rails, became a global force in steel by the turn of the twentieth century. The plant forged armor plate and guns for the United States Navy starting in the late eighteen eighties, supplying the modern fleet that emerged from the Spanish-American War.

In both World Wars, Bethlehem Steel was one of the indispensable suppliers of the Allied war effort, producing ship plate, artillery, and structural steel at a scale that few facilities anywhere could match. The structural steel for many of America's most iconic skyscrapers and long-span bridges came from this complex on the south side of Bethlehem. The plant closed in nineteen ninety-five, ending one hundred thirty-two years of production.

Its blast furnaces still stand today as monuments to what American industry once was.