Site of Hanna Furnace Co./Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Co. (Buffalo, New York)

 blast furnace, ironworks, former- dont use this category, historical layer / disappeared object

Founded in 1899 by industrialists William Rogers and Frank & Charles Goodyear, the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company was an industrial Pig Iron foundry and mill located at the end of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad line on Buffalo Harbor. Intended to be a source of iron ingots for the neighboring Bethlehem Steel Mill as well as other steel and iron works throughout the Northeast, the demand for the mill’s product quickly grew so great that it outpaced the BSRR’s ability to supply the facility with raw materials, requiring the construction of the Union Ship Canal so that freighters could access and replenish the mills’ ore stockpiles.

With the construction of the Union Canal completed in 1900, the furnaces at the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company began full scale operations, eventually requiring two additional furnaces to be built in 1910 to cope with booming demand for the iron ingots produced at the facility. With the plant operating at a high level of profitability, the original founders were able to get top dollar for their investment when they sold the mill to the M.A. Hanna Company of Cleveland, Ohio, a large Iron Ore broker and shipper. Renamed the Hanna Furnace Company shortly thereafter, the facility began to obtain production amounts of up to 3,100 tons of iron ingots daily and at its peak employed over 800 workers during World War I and roaring twenties.

The stock market crash of 1929 brought a sudden end to the Hanna Furnace Co’s boom years and its period of solo operation, as in order to survive the lean years of the subsequent Great Depression the M.A. Hanna Co was merged into the National Steel Corporation, with the Hanna Furnace becoming the key Pig Iron producer for the new conglomerate. In this new role, the Hanna Furnace continued its profitable operation for the next forty years until the appearance of foreign competition began to steadily eat away at the US Steel Industry’s bottom lines, causing the closure of several mills throughout the country and a subsequent sharp decline in customers for the Hanna Furnace’s product. By 1980 the mill was operating only three of its product lines with a partial workforce in an attempt to remain in business, however even with this lower level of production the facility became choked with stockpiles of ingots it could not sell due to its being undercut by foreign competition. Mounting debts through 1981 brought on the cessation of iron production at the Hanna Furnace for the first time in over eighty years as on January 16th, 1982 the plant’s workers were furloughed and eventually laid off when the facility was officially closed later that year.

Finding no new investors willing to take on ownership of the mill and its then-obsolete furnaces, National Steel abandoned the facility to the ownership of the City of Buffalo, itself mired in financial problems owing in large part to the collapse of the local industrial base. Seeing the abandoned factory as a source of revenue, the city sold the entire property to a scrap steel concern who demolished the majority of the structures between 1983-84, leaving most of the non-metal buildings gutted and abandoned following their departure. Remaining in this state for the next fifteen years, the remaining structures and grounds of the Hanna Furnace became the subject of a large-scale environmental remediation effort to convert the former industrial Brownfields into commercial and light industrial space.

Today, the former grounds of the Hanna Furnace Co. are occupied by commercial property and the Ship Canal Commons, a waterfront park centered around the Union Ship Canal on the site of the former ore piles used by the mill. The park contains numerous informational plaques detailing the history of the site, along with bollards and original rails once used by the unloading cranes and ore bridges which unloaded the ships calling the facility.