In 1986, with little warning, the USX Homestead Works closed. Thousands of workers who depended on steel to survive were left without work. A Town Without Steel looks at the people of Homestead as they reinvent their views of household and work and place in this world. The book details the modifications and revisions of domestic strategies in a public crisis. In some ways unique, and in some ways typical of American industrial towns, the plight of Homestead sheds light on social, cultural, and political developments of the late twentieth century.
In this anthropological and photographic account of a town facing the crisis of deindustrialization, A Town Without Steel focuses on families. Reminiscent of Margaret Byington and Lewis Hine’s approach in Homestead, Charlee Brodsky’s photographs document the visual dimension of change in Homestead. The mill that dominated the landscape transformed to a vast, empty lot; a crowded commercial street turns into a ghost town; and an abundance of well-kept homes become an abandoned street of houses for sale. The individual narratives and family snapshots, Modell’s interpretations, and Brodsky’s photographs all evoke the tragedy and the resilience of a town whose primary source of self-identification no longer exists.
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In the tradition of Walker Evans and James Agee, who depicted the ravaging effects of the Great Depression in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, anthropologist Judith Modell and photographer Charlee Brodsky combine words and images to document the heroism of ordinary people in the face of disaster. They take as their subject the closing of one of the world's most famous and productive steel mills, the Homestead Works, once the main employer of the people of Homestead, Pennsylvania.
Documented at the turn of the century by Margaret Byington and Lewis Hine in Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, this town seven miles from Pittsburgh was "cluttered, crowded, smoky," and thriving. In townspeople's reminiscences, Modell hears the rough stories of mill work forged into near myth: "Like Paul Bunyan tales, these were tales of extremes: the heat, the size of machinery, the endless hours, the flaring tempers." By the late 1980s, citizens were nostalgic for the sooty skies that meant prosperity. "Once people were buying T-bone steaks," comments a disappointed shopkeeper, "and now they're buying jumbo [bologna]." Brodsky's photos record the dismantling of town life. Her images of the mill--demolished iron works and quiet smokestacks, the blackened bones of a factory raw and empty in the bright postindustrial sunlight--convey Homestead's painful idleness. Modell doesn't retreat from this state of affairs, but neither does she allow it to stand alone. She elicits from her subjects stories that include the work of women, the joy of weddings and births, and the traditions of the town's many ethnic groups. In these non-mill stories, Modell finds a source of hope. "Residents recreated a core of life apart from steel," she explains in closing, and "upon this core, a new community can be imagined." --Maria Dolan
Review
“A Town Without Steel is about what happens about that center of gravity that has imploded. It’s an intimate and revealing portrait of the myriad ways in which people coped or failed to cope with working in steel after it collapsed. . . . Complex, nuanced, yet analytical and grounded in solid historical account, A Town Without Steel is a model worth considering for anyone seeking to understand how people convey their sense of past.”
--Journal of Social History
--Journal of Social History
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some interesting information,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Town Without Steel: Envisioning Homestead (Paperback)
This is an interesting work, covering the neighborhoods of Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall in Southwestern PA, or "The Rust Belt" as the authors refer to it. While William Serrin wrote a good recent history, Modell and Brodsky prefer to do an anthropological and photographical study. Brodsky does a fine job of drawing images from the life of Homestead onto film, though it would have been nice to have her show how things changed over time and also offer some more captions on her photos. Much of the work, sadly, seems a bit old - the interviews and photos were last done about 5 years before the book even hit the press. Then again, you are unlikely to find any more recent studies of steel towns that have been abandoned by big business and have had to cope. Modell has obviously done a good job of interviewing and she lets residents tell their own story. On the other hand, she repeats a few quotes in the book, showing a lack of editorship, and also puts her own "spin" on some comments. She seemed a more unbiased observer though than most anthropologists I have read. Few also have studied life in a city in decay and looked at the attitudes that result. Especially interesting was how many people remembered a Golden Age when many of us Pittsburghers remember smog and filth. This is a fine compliment to Serrin's work, but I wish there were more recent studies on the town. It hasn't vanished just because the media stopped paying attention to it, in praise of the latest industry to hit it big.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A honest look at Homestead,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Town Without Steel: Envisioning Homestead (Hardcover)
Having once lived in the Mon valley and now living in DC, it was hard for me to swallow the authors various descriptions of Homestead. But as I make my journies back to my home town, I realize that the novel is just truthful. The author does an excellent job of describing the life and times of the current Mon Valley
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