Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Sloss Furnaces is a National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States.It operated as a pig iron-producing blast furnace from 1882 to 1971. After closing, it became one of the first industrial sites (and the only blast furnace) in the U.S. to be preserved and restored for public use.
James Withers Sloss (April 7, 1820 – May 4, 1890) was a planter, industrialist, and the founder of the Sloss Furnaces, and a leading figure in the early development of Birmingham, Alabama. Early life
The Sloss Iron and Steel Company itself was founded by James Sloss in 1881 as the Sloss Furnace Company. [3] The Sloss Mines produced iron ore from 1882 until the 1960s. The ore that these mines produced were essential to the production of iron at the Sloss Furnaces, making them an important element in the formation of adjacent Birmingham and ...
Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0708-7. Morris, Philip; White, Marjorie Longenecker (1997). Birmingham Bound, An Atlas of the South's Premier Industrial Region. Birmingham, Alabama: Birmingham Historical Society. ISBN 0-943994-22-5.
It attracted the interest of Georgia Pacific directors in acquiring mineral lands and furnace works in the Birmingham District. In 1887, company president John W. Johnston acquired control of the Sloss Furnace Company, including its limestone quarry at Gate City and the soft ore mines that opened at Irondale that year.
The furnaces are preserved in a park or museum, or as a site otherwise open to visitors, or intended to become such. While pre-20th-century blast furnaces already have a long history of monument preservation, the perception of 20th century mass production blast furnace installations as industrial heritage is a comparably new trend. For a long ...
Built from 1881 to 1882, this is the oldest remaining blast furnace in the state. Its NHL designation represents Alabama's early 20th-century preeminence in the production of pig iron and cast iron , an example of a post- Civil War effort to industrialize the agrarian South .
Among the notable projects during this decade was the successful transformation of Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama after it shut down in 1971 into an open air industrial museum. Sloss Furnaces was declared an NHL in 1981. [26] The museum opened in 1983 and offers a variety of educational and civic programs. [27]