Vandergrift: Olmsted's Model Industrial Town

The town of Vandergrift was not an accident. It was designed. In eighteen ninety-five, George McMurtry, president of the Apollo Iron and Steel Company, commissioned the landscape architecture firm of Frederick Law Olmsted, the creator of Central Park, to plan a community for his steelworkers along the Kiskiminetas River.

The result was a planned town with curving streets following the natural terrain, generous lot sizes, and homes that workers could actually own. Vandergrift was held up in its day as a model of what an industrial town could be, a place where workers had real stakes in their community. The town was named for Captain Vandergrift, a director of the steel company. It was an experiment in whether industrial capitalism could produce something humane. The streets still curve the way Olmsted drew them.