Sept. 14, 2018
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – West Virginia Archives and History is pleased to announce the addition of the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Collection to its holdings. This collection was salvaged in February 2018 by Archives and History staff from the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation Office Building, located in the Schmulbach Building in Wheeling, following phone calls from Wheeling archivists Margaret Brennan and Laura Carroll. Additional material was transferred to Archives and History by the Ohio County Public Library, Wheeling National Heritage Area and Joanne Sullivan.
"We are grateful to our friends in Wheeling who contacted us in February about the terrible loss that was about to happen and worked with us to preserve this important material,” said Joe Geiger, state archivist. “Saving these records from destruction is a tremendous benefit to West Virginia and to historians of the steel industry. This collection will enable researchers to study the struggles the company faced in its last decades and analyze how they reflect what happened to the U.S. steel industry as a whole.
In addition to corporate records from the post-1968 period, the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation Collection contains Wheeling Steel Corporation annual reports, board of directors’ and stockholder meeting minutes and labor agreements; and Pittsburgh Steel Company annual reports, labor agreements and financial documents. Also part of the collection are materials from subsidiary and affiliated companies, including Wheeling Corrugating Company.
Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation was created by the merger of Wheeling Steel Corporation and Pittsburgh Steel Company in 1968. Wheeling Steel dated to June 21, 1920, when La Belle Ironworks, Whitaker-Glessner Company and Wheeling Steel and Iron Company merged into one company. Pittsburgh Steel Company was incorporated in 1901 following the merger of Pittsburgh Steel Hoop Company and Pittsburgh Steel Company. Wheeling-Pitt Steel, as it was known, operated plants in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. As Geiger noted, “Wheeling-Pitt was an integral part of the Ohio Valley for decades, and the impact of its closure is still felt today.”
The online finding aid for the collection is available at http://www.wvculture.org/history/collections/manuscripts/ms2018-024.html
For additional information, contact West Virginia Archives and History at (304) 558-0230.
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