Region's glass industry predates steel

Ask someone to name an industry that defined Pittsburgh and chances are the answer would be steel.

But almost eight decades before Andrew Carnegie opened his first steel plant, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works in Braddock, the region's first two glass manufacturing plants were operating.

"Glass is the great untold story about Pittsburgh," said Anne Madarasz, a glass expert, and museum division director at the Sen. John Heinz History Center in the Strip District.

In 1797, the Pittsburgh Glassworks was established at the foot of the Monongahela River near the current site of the Duquesne Incline in the South Side, she said. That same year, businessman Albert Gallatin's glass factory began operating along the Mon in New Geneva, Fayette County.

By the early 1900s there were more than 100 glass factories in Western Pennsylvania.

"Pittsburgh-produced glass has been used in fine tableware for five U.S. presidents, as tiles for the walls of New York City's great tunnels, in the crown of the Statue of Liberty, and in searchlights at the Panama Canal," the Heinz History Center notes on its Web site.

Gallatin and Pittsburgh Glassworks founders James O'Hara and Isaac Craig weren't glass experts, but they did recognize the area's potential, said Madarasz, whose book, "Glass: Shattering Notions," tells the story of the region's glass history.

Gallatin saw that Pittsburgh served as a strategic "jumping off point" for settlers headed West.

"He recognized that you could take advantage of the location and become a great provider for people who settled the interior of the country," Madarasz said.

Other factors spurred the region's growth as a glassmaking center. There was plenty of coal for fuel and the presence of the iron industry.

"Until the late 1820s, all the glass that was made was handmade glass," Madarasz said, and it wasn't until 1827 that the first machine technologies were introduced, utilizing carved iron molds and a press to create glass pieces.

"This is mostly household glassware ..., and by 1840, Pittsburgh is the pressed glass capital of the world."

By 1920, an estimated 80 percent of American glass was made in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.

Additional Information:

Pitt Fact

In 1797, the first glass manufacturing houses were founded in Western Pennsylvania. But it wasn't until 1888 that a town that became known as the 'Glass City' was founded. That community was:

A: Charleroi

B: Glassport

C: Jeannette

D: Mt. Pleasant

Answer: C