The road from Pittsburgh reaches the edge of Braddock at the brow of a hill, allowing a momentary glimpse of the Edgar Thomson steel works at the opposite end of town. The view foreshadows what lies ahead: everything between this point and that was in some way affected by the fortunes of that looming factory.
The steel plant was built in 1873 by Andrew Carnegie on the site of a battle of the French and Indian War. It’s construction brought with it prosperity, business, grand public works, and people — the town was home to some 20,000 residents at its peak, many of them immigrants. Its demise in the 1970s and 80s, along with much of the American steel industry, robbed the town of almost everything it had given. Braddock became a byword for post-industrial decline and Rust Belt malaise
