Lehigh University Lehigh Preserve Volume 22 - 2014 Lehigh Review 2014 Dissociative Identity: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania After Big Steel Evan Orf Follow this and additional works at: http://preserve.lehigh.edu/cas-lehighreview-vol-22 Recommended Citation Orf, Evan, "Dissociative Identity: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania After Big Steel" (2014). Volume 22 - 2014. Paper 15. http://preserve.lehigh.edu/cas-lehighreview-vol-22/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Lehigh Review at Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion in Volume 22 - 2014 by an authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. DISSOCIATIVE In 1943, Bethlehem Steel, then the second largest steel manufacturer in the United States, employed a record 283,735 workers. IDENTITY By 1945, the company held net assets of $880 million and had revenues of $1.1 billion. The industrial giant unified the BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA small, incredibly diverse City of Bethlehem under one roof, one cause and one AFTER BIG STEEL extremely proud identity. But in 2001, “the Steel” went bankrupt, and the blast furnaces that once roared and blazed all Evan Orf day and night went cold. Today, the city is in a state of urban renewal in attempts to reclaim a sense of unified identity in the wake of Bethlehem Steel’s collapse. Though the blast furnaces still stand, the urban renewal project, called Southside Vision 2014, is steering Bethlehem in too many different directions at the same time, giving the city a sort of dissociative identity. This essay charts both of these stories — the rise and fall of Bethlehem Steel, and the renewal of the city post-steel — and the links between them.