S. McKee plant being razed

RAZING AN OLD LANDMARK.

Seventy-eight years ago Samuel McKee, one of the pioneer window glass manufacturers in this country, located in the South Side section of Pittsburg and selecting a site at South Thirteenth street erected what was the first important window glass plant in old Birmingham. The factory grew with the development of the window glass industry until it became one of the best known in the United States.

Workmen are now razing the old plant, removing the last sign of one of the greatest industries of Pittsburg for more than half a century. The old McKee glass factory, a landmark of the South Side, was the first to make glass there and the last to put out its fires. About nine years ago, after a final desperate effort to operate under co-operative management, the furnaces were allowed to grow cold, never to be lighted again. The window glass workers who made up a large section of the Birmingham district, dropped out of sight and many have not returned.

Old glassmakers and glassworkers recall that after the appearance of the McKee factory there came to the South Side other concerns that established plants, and others located all the way from Coraopolis on the Ohio, out to Brownsville, on the Monongahela river. Almost none is left today to tell the story of that remarkable shift of location of this industry. Among the window glass factories that arrived and departed from Pittsburg; were Abel Smith & Co., T. Campbell & Co., Wm. McCully & Co., Thomas Wightman Co.. A. D. & H. Chambers, Ihmsen Glass Co., Phillips & Co., Wolf Howard & Co., D. O. Cunningham and Estep & Co.

The glassworkers payrolls during the fires of the early days amounted to millions per month. The McKee factory was one of the largest employers of labor and had some of the most noted men of the glass trade as its early employes.

One by one the factories began to move, Natural gas had become less plentiful and taxes in the city were increasing while small towns in natural gas fields in the middle west were offering free sites and free gas to get plants to locate there. Finally the McKee factory was the last to operate. It ran under difficulty for some time, changing management in the hands of the original owners or their heirs and the South Side watched the slowly dying embers of the glass fires with mingled feelings of regret and sadness, but powerless to stop the migration. The old McKee plant has stood idle and neglected for nine years, the elements putting out of commission practically all that was of value, and finally it was decided to remove the old structures.

There are glassworkers' families, descendants of the original employes of the old factory, still living on the South Side, who were keenly interested in the final disappearance of the old pile of brick and stone. Today the only glass industries of the South Side are along other lines, such as tableware, bottles, etc. The window glass factory buildings are now but a memory.