Like anyone who grew up in Pittsburgh in the 1940s and ’50s, Bruce Spiegel recalls steel mills as a big presence in his life.
His family lived in Greenfield, on a street overlooking U.S. Steel’s massive Homestead Works, and he recalls watching the mill’s glow through his bedroom window at night. And as he and his father took the Parkway to the wholesale candy store the elder Spiegel ran on the North Side, they would pass Jones and Laughlin’s sprawling mill on the South Side.
The mills then seemed as immutable a part of the landscape as the hills and rivers. Still, when Spiegel left town for good, in 1967, it was without knowing much about the people who worked in them – and years before the cataclysmic collapse of heavy industry here.
Spiegel now lives near Atlanta. His path back to his Pittsburgh roots is the story behind “City of Steel,” the veteran filmmaker’s documentary about the rise and fall of Big Steel in his hometown, highlighting the stories of the scarfers, mechanics, crane operators, labor activists and more who lived through it.
The 90-minute film’s sold-out premiere was this past Saturday at the AMC Waterfront 22, in West Homestead – ironically, part of the retail complex that replaced the Homestead Works. The documentary is now streaming for free on the film’s website.
After graduating from Penn State, Spiegel became a film editor. He later spent years as a producer, editor and director with the CBS true-crime news series “48 Hours.” As an independent filmmaker, his works include “Long Road Home,” about the troubled life of can’t-miss 1950s Major League Baseball prospect John Malangone, and “Bill Evans: Time Remembered,” about the acclaimed jazz musician.
Spiegel’s own road back to Pittsburgh was a twisting one. In 2015, at age 69, he suffered a stroke and had heart surgery. The stroke caused memory loss and aphasia. He lost his job, and said he returned to Pittsburgh shortly thereafter, in part to spark his damaged memory.
At the same time, he had begun reading about the city’s industrial past, in particular William Serrin’s acclaimed study “Homestead: The Glory and Tragedy of an American Steel Town.”
Today, Spiegel said, he remembers thinking, “Well, what do I know about Pittsburgh, what do I know about steel?”
“Suddenly, years later, I realized, ‘It happened and now it’s over.’ And suddenly I wanted to find out … what did I miss?” he added, with a laugh.
Spiegel found a local steel-industry enthusiast, businessman David Jardini, and interviewed experts like Ron Baraff, of the nonprofit Rivers of Steel. He also talked to former steelworkers like filmmaker and historian Steffi Domike, historian Charlie McCollester, and activist and musician Mike Stout.
While Spiegel’s account delves back to Andrew Carnegie’s first forays into steel, in the mid-1800s, his partnership with Henry Clay Frick, and epoch-making business deal with J.P. Morgan, the filmmaker chose to focus on the people who wore hardhats.
“I don’t care about Frick and I don’t care about Carnegie,” he said. “The real story is the people that worked every day in the mills. That’s the real story. That’s who I’m celebrating.”
Others interviewees include Ray Henderson, a scarfer; Jo Ann Strichko, who worked at National Steel, in McKeesport; and Homestead steelworker Moses Youngblood. Spiegel even managed to connect with Serrin before his death, in 2018.
Of course, Spiegel tells the story of the deadly Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, when the military was used to break a strike at the mill. Other interviews touch on the tight-knit communities that formed around the mills, the dangerous conditions inside, hard-drinking mill-worker culture, and the racism faced by Black steelworkers.
The pride the workers took in their labor is evident.
“I went to work because every day was a different encounter,” says William E. Hilla, a mechanic at the Homestead works for four decades. “Every day I learned something different and better.
About half the film details the industry’s collapse and the devastating aftermath, when well-paid workers – some of whom hadn’t finished high school – suddenly found themselves out of work and taking odd jobs to survive, or leaving town entirely.
Like many who’ve chronicled the industry, Spiegel traces its downfall to factors including the lengthy 1959 strike by United Steel Workers of America members, which led producers to begin heavily importing foreign steel, and to the subsequent failure of steel producers to upgrade technology at the mills. Spiegel also blames U.S. Steel management for pursuing profits to the detriment of America’s industrial base, and President Ronald Reagan for letting the industry wither.
Spiegel retells the especially wrenching story of Dorothy 6, the highly productive Duquesne Works blast furnace workers fought to save from demolition. In the film, steelworker Joe Procasina recalls Dorothy’s end: “Once that shut down, everything got quiet. I mean, you hear steam, and you could hear all kinda valves and all kinda noise, railroad. Once that shut down, it was like coming out of a cemetery. Just everything got quiet, and that was it.”
