Tag: Beth Steel

Gordon Davis on top of deck of #11 battery in a photo taken by his friend, “Wild Bill.” He’s wearing clothing designed to keep heat off: insulated socks, thermal long underwear, blue jeans, flannel shirt, hooded sweat jacket, yellow canvas pants and jacket, steel toe boots with one-inch wood clogs, hard hat, face shield, glasses, respirator, and mittens/gloves.

Gordon Davis worked in many different positions during his almost 40 years at Sparrows Point. He began his career in the coke ovens two weeks out of high school, in 1974. A Baltimore native and second-generation steelworker, Davis shared these photographs ranging from the 1950s (taken by his father) through the late 1980s. Click on […]

Sparrows Point shipyard workers in the mid-1920s. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Baltimore County.

The first post in our “Views of Sparrows Point” series highlighted an 1892 Maryland Steel Company photo album showing the earliest days of steelmaking at Sparrows Point. Today, we turn our attention to the Bethlehem Steel Company collection from Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Historical Society of Baltimore County. These photographs, ranging from approximately […]

Left: Sandy, in the middle, being crowned Miss Sparrows Point High School in 1972. Right: a recent headshot. Courtesy of Sandy Adams Doyle.

“Women of Steel,” an outdoor exhibition currently on display at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, examines the experiences of women who worked at Sparrows Point. This blog series hopes to highlight more voices of women steelworkers. Today, we hear from Sandy Adams Doyle as she recalls her days as a millwright’s helper at Sparrows Point. […]

A ‘General View’ of the Sparrows Point mill in 1892

Bob Crandell—whose management career at Beth Steel and its successors at Sparrows Point spanned 40+ years—recently lent the BMI a spectacular 1892 photo album. These photographs show steelmaking operations at Sparrows Point just five years after the land was acquired by the Pennsylvania Steel Company and only one year after the first steel was made […]

Photo courtesy of Aaron Henkin

by Beth Maloney and Auni Gelles How do you tell an enormous and complicated story, make it accessible to as many people as possible (during a global pandemic), respect varying individual experiences and opinions, and show just how important that story is? One answer: Use every tool you have.  In this vein, we are thrilled […]

The BMI’s Executive Director, Anita Kassof, shared this image of the museum’s Bethlehem Steel Whirley crane that was used at the Fairfield shipyard during WWII to build Liberty and Victory ships: “This was one of the last photos I took of the BMI’s campus before we closed for the coronavirus. I miss seeing the crane on the skyline each morning as I round the bend of Key Highway on my way to work.”

By Beth Maloney and Auni Gelles The Covid-19 pandemic has changed not only the nature of work for so many across our city but also the ways we are connecting, communicating, and staying close to one another. Even though the BMI is closed, we are working remotely and thinking about how to adapt our existing […]

The ‘A’ Coke Oven Battery at Sparrows Point, c. 1982, from the BMI’s Bethlehem Steel Collection.

by Joseph Abel “You had to dance with the fire a little bit.” In our last post, Deb Weiner recalled highlights from her interview with Roy Hoover, a longtime crane operator in the Bethlehem Steel shipyards. This week, we get a view from the ground with the reminiscences of Gordon Davis, a jack-of-all-trades who worked […]

A special exhibition on Bethlehem Steel in the Turner Station History Center, curated by the Turner Station Conservation Teams

Mistrust. Pride. Cancer. Prosperity. Shock. Community. A series of striking contrasts emerged as themes throughout the BMI’s “A Mill on the Patapsco” story sharing program at the Sollers Point branch of the Baltimore County Public Library on June 5, 2019. As part of the museum’s commitment to community participation, we partnered with the library to […]

A 1940 photograph of the Sparrows Point steel mill by John Vachon, from the Library of Congress.

An overview of industrial steelmaking – by Jack Burkert Editor’s note: For another look at the steelmaking process, check out “Steel in the Making,” a brochure published by Bethlehem Steel and now housed in the BMI’s archives.   The railroads had a problem. From their earliest days in the 19th century, the rails their trains […]

April 2019 project update by Deb Weiner The success of the Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project depends on input from community members, so we jumped at the opportunity to present to Tradepoint Atlantic’s semi-annual meeting. The meeting typically draws around 200 people—former steelworkers, residents of nearby neighborhoods such as Dundalk, Turner Station, and North Point, and […]