It’s a sunny Sunday morning in Rices Landing and visitors have begun to arrive. They park on the berm beside the public rest rooms overlooking a broad stretch of the Monongahela River, hemmed by the green hills of high summer. They cluster for a while, laughing, saying hello, taking in the view of pleasure boats cutting patterns on the water, then head over to 114 Water Street to see what they’ve come to see.
“From London,” one couple tells me. “We visited Carrie Furnaces last year. This year we’re back to see the foundry.”
The W.A. Young & Sons Foundry & Machine Shop has become what a generation of volunteers dared dream it would someday be – a restored, world-class heritage site with a pedigree that can’t be beat.
Present owners, Rivers of Steel, considers the machine shop that William A. Young built in 1900 with lumber from the family farm “a prime example of America’s industrial heritage.” A foundry was added in 1908 and electric in 1928 and it was in continuous use for 65 years, serving the river trade, area coal mines and the community. When the business closed in 1965, its equipment, dating from 1870 to 1920 and its inventory were left undisturbed. The machine shop became a National Historic Landmark in 2009.
Despite, or perhaps because of the COVID-19 lockdown, new enthusiasts have been taking the scenic road trip to Rices Landing in ever increasing numbers. Visitors can now go online through Rivers of Steel to sign up for what are still limited access tours, paying $10 a ticket to see our industrial past come to life.
The machinery is in working order and ready to roll when the gas engine that powers each piece through an intricate network of overhead belts is fired up. For all this capability to generate noise, the cavernous high ceilinged first floor exudes a certain serene otherworldliness as light from tall windows filters down and the forge glows as the blacksmith pulls a rod of hot metal from the fire, lays it on the anvil and brings his hammer down.
Site manager T J Porfeli splits his time and driving distance between his two part time jobs with Rivers of Steel. “I live in Eighty Four, halfway between Carrie Furnaces and the foundry.”
At Carrie Blast Furnaces, a National Historic Landmark in Swissvale, Porfeli works with visitors who carve designs into the walls of molds to make aluminum bowls and tokens. He hopes to have a furnace installed at the foundry to bring the art and excitement of the aluminum pour to Rices Landing.
Today he’s here to officiate the tours that will arrive throughout the day. He and fellow blacksmith Gary Shriver take turns at the forge and volunteers Bly Blystone and Stephen Niederriter are there to explain what the various machines were designed to do, retooling river boat crank shafts, milling, refitting and restructuring parts, grinding, cutting and pneumatically pounding and penetrating thick steel. Upstairs in the patterning rooms a wide array of wooden gears and mechanical parts are on display. When the foundry was in operation, parts to be made of metal would first be constructed to the millimeter in wood to make the mold that would then be poured. Skilled journeymen learned this part of the process as young apprentices. These were the artisan skills needed to build the Industrial Age from scratch. Thanks to Rivers of Steel, our heavy metal past of blast furnaces and places like this old machine shop have been preserved for other generations to marvel over and learn from.
Rivers of Steel President and CEO August “Augie” Carlino remembers when he first met up with the old shop and became an instant fan. “I was at a River Fest in Rices Landing and someone said ‘Man you gotta go see this place!’ A couple of weeks later I met Norma Kline and she asked me to help raise money for the machine shop.”
The late Norma Kline of Rices Landing was just one of the community of activists and organizers who kept the dream alive through the early cash strapped years. Corporate sponsorship and foundation grants were and are hard to come by for small, grassroots movements. Carlino knew this was a piece of history too valuable to lose, so Rivers of Steel stepped in to help raise $75,000 through Eberly Foundation and Pennsylvania History Museum grants. But it would take much more to make this place the well-preserved museum piece visitors see today. Rivers of Steel took stewardship in 2008 in keeping with its mission to help communities become stewards. “Our plan is to be interim owners not permanent. When full restoration is achieved, it will be returned to whoever is able to maintain it.”
The last 13 years of funding each phase of restoration has put new roofing and gutters on the cluster of integrated shops, foundry space and additions that make up the complex. Structural problems have been tackled and this year there’s a freshly painted exterior and windows have been removed, historically recreated and replaced.
Carlino is happy to add that this has been a bipartisan effort. “Saving our heritage is something we all can agree on.”
Back at the shop, the visitors are slowly leaving but some stay to chat. Ron Baraff, Rivers of Steel Director of Historic Resources and Facilities has taken the tour and is all smiles. “This is such a fine example of what we can do for ourselves in our own back yard.”
Others linger by the forge where the fires are still burning.
“Honestly I don’t have to make anything – just hitting the metal is enough,” Porfeli jokes as he swings his hammer. A ledge beside the forge is covered with first projects that students like Porfeli learned to make when they came here as apprentices – leaves with chiseled veins, wall hooks with twisted stems, letter openers and blacksmith crosses, each a lesson in techniques that lead to mastery of the craft.
Porfeli and Shriver got their start here when they came to their first Hammer Ins and decided they wanted to learn more. They know how lucky they are to have this heritage shop where they can practice their craft and share it with others.
“Anyone who wants to learn needs to be safe,” Porfeli has a list of safety items required to work with fire – boots, jeans, cotton shirts, gloves and goggles. Youth need parental approval and a willingness to learn the tools and language of the trade and most important – to listen to their teacher.
He hands over a sheet of instructions. “Here’s a list of what you need to buy and what you need to know. Come back when you know the answers and don’t forget to have your parents sign.”
Outside, a riverboat goes by pushing barges past the place where paddleboats once tied off and dragged their broken parts up the bank and through the open door of Young’s machine shop to be repaired.
Two visitors have returned to take selfies with their classic MG Midget against a backdrop of freshly painted foundry.
After touring Carrie Blast Furnaces this summer, Pittsburghers Andrew Moore, a mechanical engineer and Sydney Coombs, with a PhD in chemistry brought their penchant for “tinkering with old tools and old cars” with them as they browsed the shop’s wealth of old machines. Moore tells me they were taken by the consistencies in design between what has been preserved here and the tools they use now to lathe sharpen and mill their own projects at home.
“Today we have computers but not much knowledge about how things are made. What we take for granted is sitting here together in one shop. We’ll be back again this year and we’re bringing our friends with us.”