Preserving the ethos of industry at the Carrie furnaces: the redevelopment of an industrial heritage site and the interpretation of manufacturing culture

Abstract

This thesis proposes design principles and a program for site of the Carrie Blast Furnace Plant, a National Historic Landmark in Pittsburgh's Monongahela Valley. The Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County intends to redevelop this 168-acre former industrial site in the near future. In anticipation of this regionally important redevelopment project, this thesis considers the philosophical commitments of historic preservation, weighs economic growth imperatives, explores how the Carrie Furnaces could be made to cultivate public memory of industrialism, and examines competing visions of significance, authenticity, and interpretation of heritage sites, particularly in the context of deindustrialization. Four cases studies of internationally renowned projects demonstrate best practices in the redevelopment of historic blast furnace plants, ironworks, steelworks, and collieries. The Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park and Zollverein Park in Germany, the Belval City of Science project in Luxembourg, and the Parque Fundidora in Mexico all provide lessons in the preservation and adaptive reuse of derelict industrial infrastructure. Though their contexts differ, these four cases offer a common set of best practices to guide the Carrie Furnaces project. First, through designs and programs, these projects interpret the stories of industrial heritage sites for contemporary audiences, thereby cultivating public memory. Second, these projects' adaptive reuse of historic structures and spaces creates new, contemporary relationships between the sites and their various public audiences. This, as well as the fact that the designs are inspired by site-specific characteristics and are decidedly of their places and times, imparts authenticity. Third, these projects promote local economic revitalization through mixed-use development that engages broad constituencies. Finally, the projects use elements that pay homage to the industrial forms, materials, and culture that characterize their places. This paper's proposed development program and design for the Carrie Furnaces site preserves the site's "ethos of industry" through a 21st century manufacturing and tourism program that interprets the Carrie Blast Furnace Plant as a site of historic, vertically-integrated iron and steel production for the contemporary public consciousness. This program also promotes multi-sectoral economic growth, reconnects ailing nearby communities to the site, and conserves the material and cultural aesthetics of steel production, labor, thrift, and enterprise that made industrial Pittsburgh the center of American heavy manufacturing.