MARCH::

Blast Furnaces, Bethlehem Steel
Photo credit:
David Andrews/National Park Service

Helping humanities professionals tap the power of the region's expansive cultural heritage to enrich community life, inspire visitors, and revitalize the economy.

Bethlehem Steel

2004 Visioning Workshop

Co-sponsored by MARCH and Historic Bethlehem Partnership

The last fully-integrated steel mill left in the United States stands abandoned on 160 acres of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania's south side. By late 2003, corporate bankrupty had stalled efforts to save the historic buildings. Despite scattered and passionate citizen efforts to defend the site, the city seemed ready to support a developer likely to demolish the old structures and build a mall.

MARCH intervened with the various citizens groups, helping them in March 2004 to craft a unified vision for the site, a unity of purpose that induced the city's political leaders to listen. With urging also from statewide and national organizations, inlcuding the National Council of Mayors and National Trust for Historic Preservation, the city changed directions.

The historic structures are now considered Bethlehem's best resource for economic development, and plans are in place to sensitively adapt them to new mixed uses.

Telling the central story of industry in the Mid-Atlantic region challenges scholars and preservationists to work innovatively with developers, elected officials, and community groups in order to succeed. Closed industrial plants represent economic activity that communities urgently want to see revived. These sites are also usually enormous and often toxic. In 2003, MARCH began working with a coalition of stakeholders to show how a successful combination of industrial history and economic revitalization could work, using the abandoned Bethlehem Steel works as a model.

Background to 2004 workshop, co-sponsored by MARCH and Historic Bethlehem Partnership.
Coalition vision statement from March 2004 workshop
Professor Edward K. Muller's 6th Annual Fredric R. Miller lecture, April 2004, Industrial Preservation : Connecting People, Place, and History

he Bethlehem Steel plant site was designated one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic sites in 2004 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The designation provided a major boost for efforts to save and sensitively re-use the site. Find information here from the National Trust.

Key coalition partners, in addition to MARCH:

Local news coverage, National Trust and National Park Service feature stories and up-to-date information on coalition work is available through the Friends of the Steel website.

Anyone interested in getting involved in the Bethlehem project can help by joining Friends of the Steel.