Monessen Holding Company Llc history

After inventing a steam engine using regeneration in 1847, Siemens and his brother, Frederick, applied the principle to furnaces.

In 1856—the same year that Bessemer announced the discovery of the steel converter—the two brothers patented their regenerative furnace and built an experimental furnace embodying the principle the following year.

The first open hearth in America was installed in Pittsburgh in 1868 by Cooper, Hewitt & Company of Trenton, New Jersey, which had purchased the Siemens' patent rights.

By 1873 this company had become one of the largest steelworks in existence, producing one thousand tons of steel per week.

Rowe, who was later described by a company historian as the "driving force behind Pittsburgh Steel Company," was born in St Louis, Missouri, and entered the steel business in 1883 as a clerk in a wire mill at St Louis.

The great nail strike of 1885-86 in the Wheeling district had disrupted cut nail production and provided an opening for wire nail manufacturers.

However, it was not until 1886 that Samuel T. Wellman became the first steel maker to use these materials successfully in an open hearth furnace in the United States, when he employed magnesite to line a furnace at the Otis Iron and Steel Works in Cleveland.

In 1897 the East Side Land Company of Pittsburgh laid out the plot on which this sprightly city stands.

In September, 1898, construction of a hoop mill was initiated by the Monessen Steel Company.

When the American Tin Plate Company, a national combine that took over most of the tin plate mills in the nation, acquired the Monessen plant in 1899, it tried to introduce the Monessen system into its other mills.

The banking business is in the hands of three safely managed institutions, the oldest bank being the First National, opened February 17, 1900, with a $50,000 capital; S. M. Graham is its president.

While the creation of United States Steel captured headlines in 1901, hidden in the back pages of leading steel journals was the announcement of the organization of one of these independent, locally-owned firms: the Pittsburgh Steel Company.

The Monessen Leader was founded in 1902 by John H. Thresher, and is now owned principally by the editor, H. R. Pore.

In order to secure its coal supplies, in 1903 the company acquired the Monessen Coal & Coke Company, with mines in Westmoreland County.

The office obtained free delivery service in July, 1904.

The first step was taken in 1907 during a financial panic.

By 1908—the year in which the new installation at Monessen was built—the open hearth had become the leading means of steel manufacture, surpassing the Bessemer in production for the first time, 8.7 million to 6.8 million net tons.

Wet gas cleaning was developed in 1909 at Duquesne in order to eliminate a higher percentage of flue dust from the blast furnace gas, which was used to preheat the blast furnace stoves and, thereby, produce the hot blast.

Blown-in in August, 1913, the two furnaces were identical and shared a common cast house.

However, after business began to taper off after the Armistice on November 11, 1918, the problem of an imbalance of iron and steel making with finishing facilities became manifest.

The hoop mill continued production of steel hoops for beer barrels until national prohibition in 1919 reduced the demand.

In 1920 the American Chain Company purchased the company and its Monessen plant.

Since 1993 Monessen has been leading the hearth industry in vent free gas products.