Here in Braddock, where you are, Andrew Carnegie's steel empire began. The Edgar Thomson Steel Works, still operating on the riverbank below, was built in 1875 and named for the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Carnegie's most important customer. It was the first steel mill in the United States to use the Bessemer converter process at large scale, turning raw iron into high-quality steel rails for the railroad boom transforming the country.
Carnegie hired Captain Bill Jones to run the mill, and under Jones the Edgar Thomson Works became the most productive steel facility in the world. The mill made Carnegie the richest man in America. The town of Braddock grew up around it: a dense immigrant community of Eastern Europeans who worked the furnaces in twelve-hour shifts, six days a week.
At its peak Braddock had 20,000 residents and the first Carnegie public library in America, built here in 1889. The steel collapse devastated Braddock more completely than almost any other Pittsburgh community. The population fell below 2,000.
But the Edgar Thomson Works, now owned by U.S. Steel, is still producing steel on ground Carnegie broke nearly 150 years ago. Some things outlast their creators.