Even with its new warehouse, there are no guarantees that Heinz will be able to maintain its manufacturing presence perpetually, and if someday they leave, Pittsburgh will be left with an unremarkable 1990s warehouse — David S. Rotenstein, Society for Industrial Archeology Newsletter, Fall 1999.
I should have put money on that 1999 prediction. Heinz did leave Pittsburgh and the city did end up with an ugly and unremarkable (and now abandoned) 1990s warehouse.
Former Pittsburgh Wool Company site, 2019.
Twenty years ago the Pittsburgh Wool Company building was demolished so that the Heinz company could build a new warehouse to distribute soups and baby food. The demolition marked the end of a historic building and more than 150 years of continuous use of a single site by the leather industry. Since the 1840s, wood (and later brick) tannery buildings had occupied the site on the north shore of the Allegheny River where the Pittsburgh Wool plant was located.
They, like their neighbor to the south, the H.J. Heinz Company, were part of Pittsburgh’s industrial heritage. Yet, in 1999 then-Mayor Tom Murphy cut a deal with Heinz to enable the company to expand its footprint to the north. The deal included the threat that if the company that occupied the property Heinz wanted didn’t agree to leave, the city would use its eminent domain powers to seize the land that had been declared blighted in 1980. The Pittsburgh Wool Company was the entity that needed to move.
In a new PublicSource article, I re-examined the 1999 eminent domain battle through a lens shaped by my recent work on displacement and gentrification. This photo essay documents the Pittsburgh Wool Company site through time.
This is a basic warehouse building undistinguishable from a thousand other buildings in the city — John DeSantis, Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission chairman, July 1999.
James Callery tannery, c. 1889. The Pittsburgh Wool Company occupied the highlighted building from the 1950s to 2000.
A view the Pittsburgh Wool Company, the National Lead Company and surrounding businesses on River Avenue looking to the Allegheny River. Pittsburgh City Photographer, December 20, 1962. Historic Pittsburgh image.
Pittsburgh Wool Company, 1997.
Pittsburgh Wool Company, 1997.
Pittsburgh Wool Company as seen from Pennsylvania Route 28, 1997.
Pittsburgh Wool Company demolition, October 2000. Photo by Elsie Yuratovich.
Pittsburgh Wool Company demolition, November 2000.
Abandoned former Heinz warehouse, Pittsburgh Wool site, October 2019.
The Pittsburgh Wool Company relocated to the Strip District when its historic building was demolished. By 2019, all that remained was a shell company used by the former owner to manage his real estate assets.
© 2020 D.S. Rotenstein
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