July 20, 2019 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
(This article originally appeared at Tube City Almanac on June 21, 2009.)
(Click to see the full page)
From the tattered, dusty archives of Tube City Almanac, here's what the front page of the Daily News looked like 40 years ago this afternoon.
According to the News, a ceremony was held the previous night at Kennedy Memorial Park on Lysle Boulevard to mark the moon landing.
Speakers included the Rev. David Blattner of McKeesport Assembly of God Church, Mayor Albert Elko, Msgr. Michael Dravecky of Holy Trinity Church, Rev. Stephen Wood of Central Presbyterian Church, Rabbi Milton Turner of Tree of Life Synagogue and Rev. Frank Waters of Christ A.M.E. Church, who delivered the invocation.
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May 03, 2018 |
By Staff Reports | Posted in: History
This week in 2008, from our files:
McKeesport Mayor Jim Brewster declared his intention to "fire Blue Cross-Blue Shield" as the city's health insurance carrier. The pledge came after Highmark, the Pittsburgh region's Blue Cross licensee and its dominant health care provider, raised the rate on one city plan by $620,000 --- nearly 84 percent.
Brewster scheduled a meeting with another health insurance carrier, saying: "We'll give them a little taste of McKeesport competitiveness."
The new executive director of McKeesport's YMCA said that "failure is not an option," but admitted the 120-year-old institution was struggling with an aging building, a declining number of members and serious debts. The McKeesport Y was considering a merger with the larger YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh and the possibility of selling its building on Sinclair Street.
The American Lung Association named Pittsburgh the "sootiest city" in the United States, surpassing Southern California. The dubious distinction was mainly due to high levels of particulates in the air near U.S. Steel's Clairton Works. The facility produces coke, a fuel created by superheating coal in ovens.
An Almanac editorial noted that many chemicals and medicines are made from the byproducts of coke, and that the Mon Valley needs "the high-paying, blue-collar jobs that Clairton Works and coal-mining provide, (but) we also need clean air."
February 08, 2018 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
I recently stumbled across an October 1949 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story about McKeesport, which includes this photo of two women standing at the intersection of Locust Street and Lysle Boulevard.
Except the street signs still bore the name "Jerome Boulevard," years after the street was renamed for Mayor George H. Lysle, who died in 1947.
"Street signs show a resistance to change," the caption says. What? Say it ain't so!
January 25, 2018 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
The week of Jan. 21, 2008, from our archives:
State and federal environmental officials were investigating complaints about the Elizabeth Twp. Sanitary Authority. According to published reports, the township's sewage treatment plant had dumped raw, untreated wastewater into the Youghiogheny River on more than 70 occasions in 2006 and 2007.
During the most recent documented incident, state officials said, 6.3 million gallons were dumped into the river on Dec. 16, 2007. The township had contracted operation of the plant to Veolia Water, a French-owned conglomerate. The authority was closed in 2013 and wastewater is now treated at a plant in McKeesport.
McKeesport-based Blueroof Technologies was the subject of a feature story by Tonia Caruso on WQED-TV's "On Q" newsmagazine. The story spotlighted Blueroof's "model cottage," located on Spring Street just off of Walnut Street. The cottage was a "smart house" designed to showcase technologies that allow senior citizens and the disabled to live in their own homes and remain productive. Many of the devices were designed at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.
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November 30, 2017 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
With the Daily News Building making some news of its own this month, we thought we'd reach into the Tube City Online archives to show you what the building originally looked like.
As constructed in the 1930s, the Daily News building was about half of its present size. Visible in this photo is the original three-story portion of the building constructed at the corner of Lysle Boulevard (originally called Jerome Avenue) and Walnut Street.
Based on the cars, this photo was probably taken about 1953 or 1954.
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November 03, 2017 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
This year, the 30th anniversary of the closing of U.S. Steel's National Works, I'm continuing to look through items that we collected in 1997 at the McKeesport Daily News on the 10th anniversary --- but for, whatever reason, were never published.
William J. Copper was born in 1914 in McKeesport and was a third-generation National Tube employee --- both his grandfather and father came to McKeesport from West Bromwich, England, to work in the mill.
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November 02, 2017 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
In 1997, while working at the McKeesport Daily News, I realized that it had been exactly 10 years since U.S. Steel's National Works had closed --- actually, I think I noticed an item under "This Day in History."
Business editor Sue Simkovic, photographer John Barna and I decided to do something we called "The National Works Project," and we asked readers to send us their memories of working in the mill.
For a variety of reasons, none of which I remember (probably lack of space), we didn't use everything we collected. One item I particularly regretted not using was a poem that came to us from a retiree named Ed Brush.
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November 01, 2017 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
This year marked the 30th anniversary of an event that most people in the McKeesport area would probably rather not remember.
On Aug. 29, 1987, the final workers at U.S. Steel's National Plant --- 21 in all --- left work for the last time.
The plant, built by the National Tube Company, beginning in 1872, had once employed 9,000 people, and operated the largest pipe-making mill in the world.
But by 1981, National Plant was reeling. The Texas and Louisiana oil and gas drilling boom of the 1970s had collapsed. Foreign steel mills were exporting products to the United States --- often below the cost to produce them, a practice called "dumping."
Then, in the summer of 1981, the U.S. economy went into recession.
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September 14, 2017 |
By Jason Togyer | Posted in: History
Throwback this Thursday to 1964, when Mon Valley residents could board a train in Downtown McKeesport --- "all cars air-conditioned" -- to New York, Washington, Baltimore, Akron, Detroit, Chicago ... or Willard, Ohio.
You always wanted to go to Willard, Ohio, didn't you?
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, whose tracks entered McKeesport between Market Street and Walnut Street in the Seventh Ward, then cut across Walnut Street, Fifth Avenue and Lysle Boulevard, then had six long-distance trains (three westbound, three eastbound) each day that stopped in McKeesport, at a train station roughly on the present site of the Dollar Bank drive-thru location on Lysle Boulevard.
That doesn't count the 16 commuter trains (eight east, eight west) that connected Versailles to Pittsburgh, stopping along the way in Christy Park, McKeesport, Braddock and Rankin. One train each way even went from Connellsville to Pittsburgh, through West Newton, Sutersville and Coulter.
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May 17, 2017 |
By Staff Reports | Posted in: History
May 15, 2007: Voters in Pennsylvania overwhelmingly rejected a proposal from Gov. Ed Rendell to allow school districts to lower their property taxes in exchange for enacting higher wage taxes. The referendum called for by Act 1, the "Taxpayer Relief Act," was rejected in 98 percent of Pennsylvania school districts.
As the Pennsylvania Taxpayers Cyber Coalition noted at the time, "Part of the issue with funding (Pennsylvania) schools is that rural or older districts do not have the assessed value to support education. If they do not have the assessed value, they will not have the aggregate income level either ... the shift is especially valueless in distressed districts and the overall tax increase in rich districts is smaller than in distressed ones."
In an editorial, Tube City Almanac said Rendell had received a "spanking" from Pennsylvania and suggested that Act 1 was only shifting the tax burden, not reforming an unfair system for funding schools.
For his part, Rendell said voters were "were confused" and didn't have enough information.
"Let's put to rest the legend that Fast Eddie (Rendell) is a political genius," we editorialized. "For whatever reason, he keeps misreading the mood of the citizens and other elected officials, making his political acumen looks less 'David L. Lawrence in his prime' and more 'second-term Milton Shapp.'"
