Carrie Furnace
Interesting facts
- The Carrie Deer was made between 1997 and 1998 by an unofficial group led by sculptor Tim Kaulen, six to eight people working every Sunday for a year.
- Its builders used only material salvaged on site: steel tubing, structural metal, copper wire and rubber hose.
- The furnaces served as a backdrop for the 2013 film Out of the Furnace, starring Christian Bale, including a fight scene shot inside.
- The works drew immigrants from Europe and Black workers from the American South, and safety signs had to be posted in several languages.
- The historic Carrie site once spread across about 168 acres on both banks of the Monongahela River.
- Rivers of Steel now runs an urban arts programme in which graffiti writers paint the old furnace walls legally.
- In 2020 the grounds beneath the furnaces were turned into a makeshift drive-in cinema.
Why it is worth it
Carrie Furnaces 6 and 7 are two blast furnaces standing on the bank of the Monongahela River just upstream from Pittsburgh, and they are among the very few pre-Second World War iron-making furnaces left in the United States. About 28 m tall and faintly amber with rust, they are what remains of the enormous Homestead Steel Works — once the heart of the industry that made Pittsburgh.
The first Carrie furnaces were built in the 1880s; Andrew Carnegie bought the site in 1898, and it passed into US Steel on the company's founding in 1901. Molten iron from here was carried across the river to the Homestead mills on the site's own hot metal bridge, which still stands. At its peak the site produced 1,000 to 1,250 tons of iron a day. Furnaces 6 and 7 were built in 1907 and ran until 1978; the rest of the complex was demolished after the works closed, and these two were designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
What makes the site remarkable now is the way nature and art have moved into the machinery. Allegheny County bought the land in 2005, and the nonprofit Rivers of Steel, which manages it, runs two kinds of guided tour: one explains how the furnaces made iron, the other follows the site's second life as an art space. In the years when the site lay abandoned, graffiti writers covered its walls, and in 1997–98 a group of unofficial artists built the Carrie Deer, a deer's head some 14 m tall made entirely of pipes and scrap found on the site and hidden among the structures. It has since been preserved, alongside newer installations and a garden growing among the iron.
Getting there
Carrie Furnace is on the Monongahela in Swissvale, in the Pittsburgh area, about 3 km from Wilkinsburg. Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) is about 30 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Cathedral of Learning 6.4 km · skyscraper
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Carrie Furnace is a retired blast furnace located along the Monongahela River in the Pittsburgh area industrial town of Swissvale, Pennsylvania. It was one of the structures comprising the Homestead Steel Works. The Carrie Furnaces were built in 1884 and they operated until 1982. During its peak, the site produced 1,000 to 1,250 tons of iron per day. All that is left of the site are furnaces #6 and #7, which operated from 1907 to 1978, and its hot metal bridge. The furnaces, designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006, are among the only pre-World War II 20th century blast furnaces to survive.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
40.41308, -79.89008per Wikidata