THE MAGIC CITY OF STEEL

by Steve McShane, Archivist/Curator, Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University-Northwest

The Steel Industry | The Steel Works | The Town of Gary

Along with building a state of the art integrated steel mill, U.S. Steel officials sought to construct a model company town for the skilled workers, foremen, and supervisors. The corporation poured resources into the design and construction of the Town of Gary, built simultaneously with the mill. U.S. Steel's First Subdivision, that area of the city on Corporation property, enjoyed paved streets, landscaped residential areas, a booming downtown district, and pleasant company housing. Planners deliberately avoided, however, the experiences of paternalistic company towns such as Pullman, Illinois, where the company had owned all housing and dictated the morals and social behavior of the workers. Instead, the Corporation desired a more subtle form of influence over town affairs, letting employees own their own homes while the company sold lots and provided mortgages. Although non-corporation businesses and homes flourished in the First Subdivision, the company dictated strict regulations on building and design.

U.S. Steel created a subsidiary, the Gary Land Company, to design the city. The Land Company's president, Eugene J. Buffington, noted the Corporation's pragmatic view of the town's plan: "Gary is nothing more than the product of effort along practical lines to secure the right living conditions around a steel manufacturing plant." The Gary Land Company succeeded in that mission, at least in its First Subdivision, extending south from the plant site to about 9th Avenue. Although the city grew beyond this border, the actual company constructed town resided in the First Subdivision.

Built simultaneously with the mill, the First Subdivision comprised 800 acres, platted into 4,000 lots; each block included forty residential lots. Streets were designed in grid fashion, parallel to two major thoroughfares, 5th Avenue (east west) and Broadway (north south). Businesses along these main streets had to rise at least two stories and be built of stone or brick. The residential areas were well manicured, with paved streets, sidewalks, young shade trees, and topsoil. Another USS subsidiary, the Gary Heat, Light, and Water Company provided free water for trees and lawns for four months a year. The Gary Land Company installed all utilities and sewers. U. S. Steel donated lots for parks, churches, the public library, YMCA, and other buildings. The First Subdivision also included the booming downtown business district, with the hub at 5th and Broadway.

Employees could purchase lots from the Land Company but had to adhere to strict building regulations, including erecting a building within eighteen months. Only the very well paid employees could meet this requirement, so the Gary Land Company began to build, sell, and/or rent houses for supervisors, foremen, and skilled workers. 506 houses in a variety of styles and price ranges were offered for sale or rent, depending on the income and status of the employee; most were rented at rates determined by the model and location in the First Subdivision.

By 1908, two years after mill and town began construction, the Corporation had spent $42,000,000 on the mill and town projects. Local boosters referred to the Town of Gary as the "Magic City" and the "City of the Century."

While the Corporation erected a modern state of the art mill town in its north side First Subdivision, it virtually ignored the southern end of the city outside of its property. Living in the First Subdivision was out of the reach of the bulk of the Gary Works workforce, most of whom were foreign born laborers. By 1920, fifty-two nationalities made their home in Gary, along with a significant number of African-American migrants from the South and Mexican workers from south of the border. The newcomers lived in the southern area of the city, known as "The Patch." There a very different Gary evolved, with numerous shacks, saloons, and overcrowded boardinghouses, along with a proliferation of real estate speculation and unsanitary conditions. A mining camp atmosphere prevailed, including over 200 saloons, with names such as the "Bucket of Blood." Gambling and prostitution flourished. Unpaved streets, no sewage facilities, and no running water were trademarks of the Patch.

As historian James B. Lane has described, the Gary police chief at the time referred to the Patch as "hell on wheels." :

"Here men drank, brawled, and sometimes died. Here charming streetwalkers sold their wares in a way any of the fifty-plus nationalities could understand. Here men either stashed away their wages in order to return to the homeland to a comfortable life or to bring their wife or mail-order bride over or gambled and drank away every sweated penny."

Thus, Gary's early history comprised a 20th century Tale of Two Cities. On the one hand, the company built and maintained the north side, a place of law and order, strict regulation of building and boozing, a glittering downtown surrounded by immaculate residential areas. This was the land of USS executives, foremen, and skilled workers, along with professionals and small businessmen. On the other hand, on the "other side of the tracks" rose the south side, the Patch, a rough, unregulated, unordered society, a slum. This was the unplanned Gary, the home of the unskilled worker. The irony here is that on Gary's lakefront existed the most advanced technology in the world at USS Gary Works. The best planning and engineering had gone into building the world's largest integrated steel mill; yet, a couple of miles south lay chaos and disorder.

When one enjoys the dramatic views of city and mill captured in the US Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, one should keep in mind that the company photographers documented only the mill complex and the First Subdivision, although the collection also contains some images of the south side. While the south side was part of the Town of Gary, the company built town, the "Steeltown," was located to the north. This "Two Gary" phenomenon served as a continuous theme in the city's history through most of the twentieth century. It goes a long way toward explaining the dynamic and dramatic changes Gary experienced in its ninety-six years. It will be interesting to see how the "City of the [20th] Century" will develop as a "City of the 21st Century."

Sources

Brody, David. Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era. Harvard Historical Monographs, 45. New York: Russell & Russell, 1970.

Calumet Regional Archives. U.S. Steel Corporation Collection, CRA #41. <http://www.iun.edu/~lib/cra041.htm>.

Fisher, Douglas A. Steel Serves the Nation, 1901-1951: the Fifty Year Story of United States Steel. New York: United States Steel Corporation, 1951.

Lane, James B. City of the Century: a History of Gary, Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Mohl, Raymond A. and Neil Betten. Steel City: Urban and Ethnic Patterns in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1950. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986.

Moore, Powell. The Calumet Region: Indiana's Last Frontier. Indiana Historical Collections 39. [Indianapolis], Indiana Historical Bureau, 1959.