The Giant That Built America's Skyline, Then Fell Silent — Bethlehem Steel

In 1943, one steel plant along a river in eastern Pennsylvania employed 31,523 people. That's not the whole company. That's one plant, in one city. This is the full story of Bethlehem Steel — from an 1857 iron works on the Lehigh River, through the plant that framed the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the George Washington Bridge, to a $1.5 billion annual loss in 1982, the last blast furnace going cold on November 18, 1995, and the site's second life as a concert venue and casino built inside the ruins of the old furnaces. — Topics covered: The founding of Bethlehem Steel and its rise to America's second-largest steel producer World War II production and the 31,523-worker plant The decline of American steel and Bethlehem's 1995 shutdown The 2001 bankruptcy and 2003 corporate dissolution SteelStacks — what the site became, and how Sparrows Point, Maryland became something else entirely — This video uses real footage of the Bethlehem Steel site sourced from public creators. — This is Abandoned US Industries — the channel that covers the places American industry built, used, and walked away from. New video every week. Subscribe to follow the series.