i BIRMINGHAM HISTORICAL SOCIETY //* Aerial View of Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI)'U. S. Steel Ensley Works (active 1886-early 1980s) and the Ensley Commercial and Residential Districts in Opossum Valley, Flanked by the Southern Edge of the Pratt Coal Seam (left) ,View Looking East Across Commercial and Residential Districts to the Chert (Flint) Ridge and the Birmingham City Center, Jefferson County, AL-52-14 (the Historic American Engineering Record - Library of Congress catalogue number), Jet Lowe, 1994. In the 1880s, wealthy planter and entrepreneur Enoch Ensley began industrial facilities and a town in this wide valley. By the 1940s, TCI plants — extending West from Ensley to Fairfield and on to Bessemer — produced three million tons of ingots, blooms, billets and finished hot-rolled steel products including structural shapes, plates, rail, reinforcing bars, nails and wire. TCI was a fully integrated mill, locally mining its coal, ores and fluxing stones and locally producing its coke, iron and steel. In the 1950s,TCI employed as many as 28,000 persons. Flanking the industrial facilities, a regional business and shopping center served the plants, outlying mining areas and residential districts. The Ramsay- McCormick Building (1929), the only major office building built before the 1960s outside of the city center, looms above the business district. Today, U.S. Steel continues its Birmingham operations at Fairfield, just to the west of Ensley. Front Cover Illustrations: Aerial View, Hardie-Tynes Manufacturing Co. On the Skyline of the Birmingham City Center, Jefferson County, AL-13-16,JetLowe,1994. By 1900, Birmingham had become the leading cen­ ter of Southern iron and steel production. Today, a stone's throw from the city center, the Hardie- Tynes firm, established in 1895 and still family owned, operates in its early-20th-century buildings and produces large, machined products for hydro­ electric dams, naval vessels and spacecraft. Mixer Ruins, Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI) - U. S. Steel Open Hearth Steel Mill (active 18994980), Ensley-Birmingham, Jefferson County, AL-52-A-2, Jet Lowe, 1993. Technological obsolescence and other factors led to the closing of U.S. Steel's Ensley mills. Pictured are mixer ruins and exhaust stacks remaining at this site. Head Frame, Pyne Mine (active 1918-1970), Bessemer, Jefferson County, Drawing by Adam Campagna, 1993. Intensely mined from the Civil War to the 1960s, Red Mountain's ore mines ceased production in 1970. While most mining facilities were abandoned or scrapped, this hoist serves as centerpiece for a variety of light industries now using the former Woodward Iron Co. site. Back Cover Illustration: Iron Pour, Desulphurizing Area, U. S. Pipe and Foundry Company, Bessemer, Jefferson County, AL-32-A-9, Jet Lowe, 1993. At its Bessemer plant, U. S. Pipe manufactures iron and pipe as it has since 1888, but now makes "duc­ tile" iron from scrap and alloys, not from the tradi­ tional blast furnace pig iron. Since the early 1900s, Birmingham has led the world in technological innovation and manufacture of foundry iron and pipe. The bright flash in this photograph results from chemical treatment of molten iron being prepared to make pipe. -2»- k^^k PREFACE Industria l development began with the identification and mapping of the minerals underlying the five-county area that became known as the Birmingham District. Civil War demand for armament bolstered early industry. Soon after the war, entrepreneurs forged Birmingham from fortunate geology, new rail and water links and innovative technology, especially in foundry iron and pipe manufacture. Following the explosive pig iron boom of the late-19th century, Birmingham emerged as the nation's leading foundry iron producer and the industrial capital of the South. Industry dominated the local economy until the 1960s. In 1930, one-half of all workers were employed in mining and manufacturing. Since World War II, indus­ trial employment has diminished here as elsewhere in the United States. Obsolete plants, foreign competition, changing markets and mandatory pollution control closed many facilities. Automation also contributed to the reduc­ tion of manufacturing jobs. However, investment in new technologies and facilities as well as new uses of historic industrial sites have con­ tributed to Birmingham's continuing position as the South's premier industrial center. Birmingham remains the world center of ductile iron pipe production and a regional center of steel, coal, coke, foundry castings and transportation. While the Birmingham District — Jefferson, Shelby, Tuscaloosa, Walker and Bibb counties — is now diversified and mainly service-oriented, mining and manufacturing remain vital components of the economic base. High-skill manufacturing and mining employ 20 per­ cent of the Birmingham District work force. !•.•?* ' From 1992 to 1997, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), a division of the National Park Service, working with the Birmingham Historical Society, con­ ducted a multi-year survey of Birmingham's industrial resources creating a permanent record of significant indus­ trial, technological and architectural sites. This record, now part of the HAER Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., forms the data bank for this publication. Together with written histories and pho­ tographs, historians and architects produced measured and interpretive drawings as components of documentation. Field investigations as well as historic records contributed to this documentation. HAER also made more than 1,300 photographs at 185 sites and conducted full recording pro­ jects (histories, drawings and photographs) at 13 sites. HAER had recorded the Sloss Furnaces in 1976 prior to this effort. HAER's sister organization, the Historic American Building Survey (HABS), recorded nine sites not included in this publication. Aerial photographs were made from 1992 to 1994. The Society is pleased to show­ case this record of the Birmingham Industrial District. Aerial View of Stockham Valves and Fittings, Inc. 's Main Plant on the Birmingham Cityscape with Red Mountain and the Sloss Furnaces (top left), AL-49-27, Jet Lowe, 1994. Conducting foundry operations from this site since 1918, the Stockham company has made pipe, valves and fittings for waste and water transmission and other industrial applica­ tions for almost 80 years. TANNEHILL FURNA Tuscaloosa County, Alabama c CHIMNEY (RECONSTRUCTION) CHARGING BRIDG Section Through No. 2 Blast Furnace 0 12 3 4 5 METERS \'4B Of the three furnaces standing at Tannehill, the No. 2 furnace retains the highest degree of integrity. This stack was constructed of dry-laid sandstone blocks, without the support of iron binder rods which were typical in furnaces of this type. Although the front facade of the outer stack was severely damaged around 1925, it was rebuilt in 1986 and has been restored to its previous appearance. In an effort to stabilize the structure, the corbeled stone arches have beam fitted with angle-iron lintels. The interior of the furnace has remained virtually untouched since it was put out of service in 1865, and recent excavations have revealed a well- preserved hearth area, including tuyere stones and a partially deteriorated tirnpstone. The damstone, complete with clay plug in the cinder notch, remains in situ. Although the bosh has collapsed, the inwall of the stack is intact, resting on cast iron mantle plates in the stone structure. Unlike the other two SCALE I/2 = I -0 furnaces on this site, the No. 2 furnace is lined with refractory sandstone instead of firebrick. All remaining interior surfaces, including the bottom surface of the tirnpstone, display a vitreous glaze caused by the action of hot gasses in the furnace. 0 u U S CM CES When Captain Sutherland arrived at Tannehill, he found the ironworks had recently been shutdown in apparent anticipation of his attack. Before the day was Si . 1865 done, his men put all three furnaces out of commission, blown up the overhead charging bridges, torn up the tramway to the Goethite Mines [brown ore mines] and set fire to the foundry and cast houses. — Jim Bennett, describing the Federal attack of 1865, Old Tannehill — A History of the Pioneer Ironworks in Roupes Valley 1829-1865, 1986. Furnaces No. 1, 2 and 3 (left to right, blown in 1859, 1862, 1863) with Reconstructed E (RECONSTRUCTION) Sheds and Charging Bridges, Roupes Creek, Tannehill Historical State Park (established — 3 1969), Tuscaloosa County, AL-122-7, Jet Lowe, 1993. D —' Rescued from backwoods oblivion, the Tannehill Furnaces have been L^*PWW- reconstructed and complemented by a museum and associated structures $'" #^ of the late-19th century. The three stone furnaces form the centerpiece im0' of a 1,500-acre state park that attracts 400,000 visitors, annually. In the 1830s, Daniel Hillman began a forge, here, to sell iron products to farmers. Cotton planter and stock breeder Ninian Tannehill purchased this facility. Construction of Furnace No. 1 and a tramway to nearby brown ore mines upgraded operations in 1859. Three years later, the Confederate government built the "Double Furnaces" to provide pig iron for armament production at the Selma arsenal. A steam-powered engine blew a hot air s*. blast into the new furnaces, increasing the daily output at the site. During the final years of the Civil War, an estimated 600 slaves worked at _*9 Tannehill cutting and hauling wood, mining ore and feeding the furnaces. Eg 3 Built against a hillside, as iron furnaces had been constructed for centuries, b.fc o workers manually fed ore and charcoal into the top of the furnaces. They obtained charcoal to fire the furnaces and melt the ore by timbering *lilN^ adjacent forests and charring the wood in circular pits. Daily production STONE OUTER WALL averaged 20 tons. Ox teams hauled the iron 18 miles to the railhead at Montevallo for shipment to the Selma arsenal. MORTAR & RUBBLE FILL STONE FURNA CE LINING BOSH (Conjectural Location) CAST IRON MANTLE PLA TE CAST IRON LINTEL DEBRIS TUYERE SALAMANDER UPRIGHT TIMPS TONE (Partially In tact) No.