Bethlehem Steel - Buffalo Stories Archives & Blog

What It Looked Like Wednesday: WNY’s industries boom in 1955

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Back in 1955, this page from a Buffalo Evening News marketing piece was created to let potential advertisers from all around the country know that Buffalo was filled with a blue-collar workforce with plenty of disposable income — “people working, people living, people buying,” said the promo piece.

“Buffalo industries are BIG in the United States,” the page says, “and these Buffalo industries are BIG in creating wealth.”

Bethlehem Steel ad, 1953 (Buffalo Stories archives)

With numbers probably gleaned from Labor Department stats, Buffalo claimed 43,300 steel workers, 36,700 auto industry workers, 19,400 petroleum/chemical workers and 15,000 grain/food workers.

The combined number of people working in manufacturing in just those industries in the mid-’50s was about 115,000. Today, the number for all industries is less than half of that. In August 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Labor says that there were 51,300 people employed in manufacturing jobs. More people were working in steel plants and grain elevators in 1955 than are working in any factory or plant in the Buffalo area today.

Inside Buffalo’s General Mills plant, Robert W. Duszczak operates the puffing gun, used to turn grains into breakfast cereals. 1965 photo. (Buffalo News archives)

While manufacturing is not as important to Buffalo’s economy as it once was, these days there’s steady growth in sectors like education, health care and hospitality.

Buffalo’s most infamous billboard: Will the last worker out of WNY turn out the light?

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This oft-quoted billboard was posted near Buffalo City Hall in September 1977, and is looked upon as Buffalo’s darkest moment, reading, “Will the last worker out of Western New York please turn out the light?”

The 1977 billboard behind Buffalo City Hall read, “Will the last worker out of Western New York please turn out the light?” (Buffalo Stories archives)

The bitter and deadly Blizzard of ’77 cemented Buffalo’s place in the punchlines of Johnny Carson and funny people everywhere. By 1977, recession, inflation, and an oil crisis crippled Western New York’s steel and auto industries and Buffalo had begun what would turn out to be a decades-long hemorrhaging of good-paying industrial jobs.

At the time, people were wondering how it could get any worse for Western New York. Some of the thousands of steelworkers still employed at Bethlehem Steel paid to have this billboard erected in the shadow of Buffalo’s City Hall.

While posted in despair and desperation, the message “Will the last worker out of Western New York please turn out the light” did little more than land another strong body blow to the already delicate Western New York psyche.

The idea for such a billboard was not original — the first of its kind was built in Seattle when the aerospace industry was disintegrating there. But for Buffalo, the sign — what it represented and what it amplified — helped create a point for a few to rally around.

State Senator James D. Griffin was elected mayor within weeks of the billboard’s appearance. He pointed to it often as a basement from which to build up. The sign also underscored the necessity for Buffalonians to start feeling better about themselves, and from that feeling came that great anthem of Western New York self-love — the Buffalove prequel — “Talking Proud.”

Torn-Down Tuesday: Signs of Bethlehem Steel along Route 5

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

For decades now, thick weeds have enveloped chain link fencing right up to the roadway along Route 5 in Lackawanna.

Buffalo News archives

Thirty-two years ago, even as Bethlehem Steel’s operations were winding down, there was no room for weeds. This photo shows the trappings of steel manufacturing, familiar for generations along that stretch of the lakeshore.

This photo was taken in 1983, as part of a story talking about traffic tie-ups on Route 5.

Torn-down Tuesday: Bethlehem Steel from the air

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It’s with a hybrid of longing and loathing that we look back at Bethlehem Steel.

By itself, a title like “Torn-down Tuesday” might inspire a sense of loss and memories of once-wonderful places that vanished after a misguided date with a steam shovel or a backhoe.

Sometimes, it’s a bit more complicated. Many of us fondly remember the days when 20,000 of our Western New York neighbors worked for Bethlehem Steel. It was dangerous, back-breaking, really terrible work — but the good pay and benefits from Bethlehem and other manufacturing giants provided the means for hundreds of thousands of men to offer the next generation a life better than their own.

The burning of coal to smelt iron, and the slag and smoke that process created, left our ground, water, and air heavily polluted. It contributed to irreversible environmental damage and very likely played some role in the sickness and disease of thousands of people who never stepped foot in the plant.

But still, smoke stacks meant jobs.

The smoke stacks were still there when this photo was taken in 1984, but most of the jobs left in 1982 when the main plant closed.