Buffalo, NY: 1800s-1920s Union Furnace Co.

(Satellite, "Western shoreline of the Katherine Street peninsula" [wikimapia])

HagleyDigitalLibrary_A, Mar 19, 1937
Demolition of furnace A, Buffalo Union Furnace Company (Buffalo, N.Y.)
"The Buffalo Union Furnace Company was a pig iron manufacturer incorporated in November 1900. This furnace was constructed in 1903.
"In 1915, it was purchased by the M.A. Hanna Company, one of many steel companies to merge into National Steel Corporation in 1929. The site was demolished and scrapped over the course of the 1930s."

"Incorporated in November 1900, the Buffalo Union Furnace Company was a Pig Iron manufacturer which occupied a significant portion of the Western shoreline of the Katherine Street peninsula on the Buffalo River. Equipped with three blast furnaces and capable of producing 300,000 tons of Pig Iron per year for use by ironworks and steel mills both local and nationwide, the Buffalo Union Furnace operated throughout the early 1900's before being absorbed by the larger Hanna Furnace Co. in the early 1920's. Already operating a large Pig Iron factory in Lackawanna along the Union Ship Canal, Hanna idled and stripped the Buffalo plant, liquidating or scrapping and materials they could not reuse at their original facility." [wikimapia]

Bubba Dubs posted three images with the comment: "Union Furnace was located near the end of Katherine St near on the Buffalo River. This is a photo I found on the Hagley Museum website and decided to take a pic of how it looks today. This is roughly the same vantage point, albeit that exact spot is private property. The indent in the side of the river was where the ore dock was located as signified by the bridge cranes on the left of the old picture. When the power authority redid that area to hold the ice boom, that dock face was changed significantly."

Brian R. Wroblewski: That place was the site of Buffalo's very 1st iron making furnaces. I have a map from the early 1800's & they were already there.

John Michalski: Awesome picture. At one time there was a proposal to “cut through” that peninsula in order to straighten out the river and handle bigger ships.

Dennis DeBruler: Brian R. Wroblewski So that site must have been developed around 1860 because that is when this source says that iron ore smelting started in Buffalo.

https://buffaloah.com/h/iron/iron.html

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HagleyDigitalLibrary_Dock

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HagleyDigitalLibrary_B, Mar 19, 1937
Demolition of furnace B, Buffalo Union Furnace Company (Buffalo, N.Y.)
[Same comment as Furnace A.]

HagleyDigitalLibrary_C, Mar 19, 1937
Demolition of furnace C, Buffalo Union Furnace Company (Buffalo, N.Y.)
[Same comment as Furnace A.]

 

David Flickr
Concrete Central & Union Furnace, 1915 - Buffalo, NY
This photo shows the Southern most blast furnace at Union Furnace Co. as seen from the South Wing Wall dock face at the Concrete Central grain elevator looking West on the Buffalo River from Turning Basin #1.