Yes when it comes to preserving the past the Pittsburgh area does a
horribly miserable job entire neighborhoods are gone as is most of
anything from the steel era If you want to get a feel what Pittsburgh
was like before the mills went down you have to drive to Johnstown Pa.
or Weirton. WV.
So it was with great sadness while driving along Coxcomb Hill Road in
Plum Boro and I saw them ripping into and removing the abandoned and
dilapidated Alcoa Powder Plant
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places the plant at one time produced the powder for Fire works and
explosives . Yet after Alcoa abandoned it no one came forward in any way
to try and save it at all and use it as some type of teaching and
social center etc.
and Alcoa has all but left Pittsburgh area and devastated New Kensington when the pulled out of the plant and research center.
There is not as much as a memorial marker for the men who lost their lives at this plant after several small explosions in fact its hard to find anything on this plant due to its sensitive nature Below is an Excerpt from a local paper
FOUR BLOWN TO ATOMSTen Thousand Pounds of Dynamite Exploded
In a Flash.A GIRL KILLED 100 YARDS AWAY.The Acme Powder Works In a Ravine Near
Hilton, Pa., Wiped Out of Existence In anInstant - Matches In the Mill the
Probable Cause.
Pittsburg, March 24.Ten Thousand pounds of dynamite blew up
at Black’s Run, near Hulton, and the only four people who knew
anything about it are scattered in fragments over a quarter of a mile
of territory.The dead are William Arthur, aged 28; Mrs. Bell Arthur, aged
17, wife of William Arthur;Sadie Remalye, aged 21, sister of Mrs. Arthur and
Charles Robbins, aged 19 years, of AlleghenyCity, who was empoyed as a puncher.
Nellie Remalye, aged 19, sister of the other women, wasfatally injured and
taken to Pittsburg, where she died in the West Pennsylvania hospital.Foreman
William Mooney of the dynamite house was hurt by a flying splinter. Mat
Feintzel,engineer, and Simon Bradley, packer, although near the scene, escaped
uninjured.Had Just Begun Work.The Acme Powder Works, the scene of the disaster,
were located in a revine about one mileabove Hulton. There were four houses
down near the creek bottom. The employees had just begun work. Twenty
minutes later the first explosion occurred, blowing the two women and twomen
into eternity. About 100 yards away from the packing house, where the explosion
occurred,was the boarding house where the victims lived. Nellie Remalye,
the injured girl, was housekeeper for the rest. The boarding house was
blowndown and resembles a heap of broken lumber, and from the debris the young
woman wasrescued, being the only survivor. She died two hours later at the
hospital without havingrecovered consciousness.The scene of the disaster
resembles a battlefield, debris and cartridge wrappers being scatteredall over
the hillside. The ground was torn into a bowl shaped depression, trees were
stripped of 31
their branches, and
buildings were blown into splinters. The warehouse of the company, 500yards
away beside the railroad track, was crushed in, and the roof was blown off.The
remains of the four victims were picked up on the hillside in pieces. Part of
the leg of aman, torn and stripped of all clothing, was found on the top of a
bluff nearly a quarter of a mileaway. It is supposed that a match had been
carried into the works, contrary to orders, and insome way caused the
explosion. The loss is estimated at $15,000. The work of rebuilding
willcommence as soon as the debris is cleared away.The roar of the explosion
was heard for miles up and down the river. Immediately afterwardscame a swaying
earthquake motion that shook houses and furniture. At Springdale, across
theriver, and at Parnassus, five miles up the road, windows were broken. Rocks,
ties and solidlumps of earth were blown 600 yards into the river by the
explosion.Some One Had Matches.Mr. McAfee, one of the proprietors of the firm,
was on the scene soon after the explosion andmade the following statement: “The
cause of the explosion was fire. Only one conclusion can be reached, and
that is that some of the dead had matches in their possession, and one
wasdropped and ignited. The living positively declare that they jad no matches.
One of the strictestrules of the company is against carrying matches except in
the engine house. We had 10,000 pounds of dynamite on the premises. This
is an unusually large stock, but we were working on a
There is also the almost unknown and now almost all gone coal mining town of Barking which sits a short way down a dead end road next to the plant
https://www.academia.edu/54716332/BARKING_Oakmont_No_1_Mine_Barking_Mine_Barking_Plum_Township_Allegheny_County_Pennsylvania_U_S_A
So gone is another piece of history which when historians do give its
history they will not get it right as usual just like many other
historic exhibits you go to see in the area they often get fact and
figures wrong because no one bothered to properly document sites before
they where destroyed , and now you can add the Alcoa Powder Plant to
the list.
Developers would rather have a clean pad to develop than work with
existing structures they claim cost too much and are impossible to
renovate which each and every contractor knows is bull shit if you
really want to save a property it can be done Carlow University proved
it when they rescued a house everyone said had to go. it all comes down
to one word GREED and that's what it is all about nothing else when it
comes time to renovate or destroy a historic structure .
Now that the buildings have all been leveled the yard is being used by Allegheny Valley Railroad as a
unloading area for sand used for fracking at local gas wells
