ERIE DOCK COMPANY (1977)
Erie Rail Huletts, 1978. The three Wellman 17 ton unloaders along Old River in the Flats were about to be demolished after unloading iro ore for over sixty years. The ore wasn’t going to the local steel mils, but the inland mills south of Cleveland. It’s called the Old River Erie Ore Dock because it was situated on a channel that was dug in 1827 for just this sort of thing. Before Huletts were les efficient unloading equipment like brownhoists, and before that, the ore was shoveled by hand and wheelbarrow at this site. It’s 1977 but that boat could have been her in the late forties because industrial cities wee originally laid out and zoned within neighborhoods and waterways that were populated.
The thing that killed the Huletts was simply a better technology that, in retrospect seems pretty obvious. Once ore boats were outfitted with self-unloading ore handling equipment, the land based system of unloading bulk freight like coal and iron ore pellets, were doomed. The Huletts took about eight hours to entirely clear a vessel of its contents, while an or boat equipped with an unloader could do the job in two hours with far less men and expense.
Each Hulett was rated at 1000 tons per hour. A typical ore boat might carry 30,000 tons so the Erie Docks could handle that in ten hours. I’ve seen ore boats immediately turn around to reload while another fully loaded one moves in immediately, with another on the horizon.
Cleveland, an iron ore hub, was also home to ore ship fleets with mining operations in Minnesota and Michigan.
Demolition is underway. Less than one mile to the north, the Pennsylvania Ore Dock on Lake Erie continues to operate four Huletts until 1992. Downriver Republic Steel was running its own Huletts – two ten ton and three 17 ton Wellmans – that it shutdown in the eighties, for the sake of the self-unloaders. In all Cleveland at one time had 14 operational Huletts and was home to their place of manufacture – McDonnell Wellman & Seaver where George Hulett worked.
From these docks the iron ore that fed the steel mills in southern and central Ohio was unloaded for a long time. In 1978 and, while a better technology, the self-unloader, was beginning to take hold, the Erie Docks became an early casualty of the effects of Black Monday in Youngstown – the symbolic beginning of what would become, the Rust Belt, as more costly inland mills, with higher costs in transporting ore and coal began to close down.
In 1978 there were plenty of ruins around. It was the era of the South Bronx, symbolic of the ruined ghettoes in many older cites like this one. 43 years later hoards of ruins explorers hyper-document a dwindling inventory of sites, that, when they were abundant, like you couldn’t believe, between 1977 and 1984, there was no one interested in its documentation, or making it memorable.
US STEEEL CENTRAL FURNACE (1979)
US Steel utilized two 10 ton Wellman Huletts at its Central Furnace Plant along the Cuyahoga River.
Iron has been produced on this site since 1881. After it was acquired by US Steel the Huletts were installed in 1908. In 1976, in honor of our nation’s bicentennial celebration, the Huletts were painted red, white and blue. The mill would close two years later.
To the left is the old powerhouse to john D. Rockefeller’s Refinery #1, that, when this picture was taken in 1979, had only the Sohio asphalt plant operating, and that closed in 1980.
The Central Furnace was demolished in the summer of 1984.
US Steel Central Furnace was built in 1909 as a pig iron plant along along the Cuyahoga River, modernizing an existing mill that had been there since 1881 – the Cleveland Rolling Mill. The Central Furnace closed in 1978 and this is two years later. The Cuyahoga empties into Lake Erie about four miles upriver which meant that the giant ore carriers of the lakes could access the steel mill itself and, with the help of the two 10 ton Wellman Hulets, an entire ship’s bulk cargo can be transferred directly to the ore yards beneath the furnaces they would feed.
There certainly wasn’t much of a market left for steel, let alone pig iron, in the years after the Central Furnace closed. Its blast furnaces had been making iron for seventy years and were completely out of date.
PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD ORE DOCKS (1980-81)
The city of Cleveland was for a long time the biggest iron or port in the world. The PRR Docks included a 44 acre ore yard and, along with the Erie Docks just one mile south on Old River, provided iron ore for the steel mills of central and southern Ohio that would be shipped there by train from Cleveland. (1980). The railroads, along with the steel mills, used Huletts as well as the McMyler Coal Dumper that was a percursor to the Huletts.
Like Pittsburgh at one time, industry and steel mills existed along the waterways and even adjacent to downtown and recreation areas. At the extreme left is the art deco Coast Guard Station, the old Municipal stadium and downtown with the BP building being built next to the Terminal Tower. At one time Upson Nut & Bolt, later Republic Steel had a steel mill with furnaces that sat on the river just below the Terminal Tower.
When, then mayor, Dennis Kucinich was asked by Tom Snyder about Cleveland, he responded, “Where else can you ski next to steel mill.” – referring to his city’s industry, its bad weather and the fact that heavy industry, before zoning, was completely integrated into the life of the city.
The Paul H. Carnahan of the Hanna Fleet (smokestack logo) and Huletts at rest in 1980. The ship was launched in 1945 as the Honey Hill for the war effort, it was sold in 1946 and named the Atlantic Dealer until it was bought by the Cleveland-based ore and steel company, Hanna and it was renamed the Carahan in 1961. The ship was sold for scrap to a Taiwanese company in 1986.
Just one history of one ship from the hundreds that have docked here since 1870 and continue to do so as self-unloaders, some of which are over 1000 feet long. So far it’s the Huletts’ technology that has lasted the longest – at this site for 81 years.
The Lake Wabush getting unloaded in 1981. If one Hulett was down for reapairs, the other would still work. Originally run on steam power, they were quickly electrified, and drew so much power, that often a powerhouse just to supply the Huletts with juice would be built.
The Huletts were compared to grass hopper or preying mantis legs. The original design was done in 1899 and the last ones, in Chicago, were operational until late 2001.
Industrial cities and neighborhoods were fully integrated into the world of working-class people, in fact, in many neighborhoods, according to the amount of land taken up by industry, residential sections were dwarfed by the size and scale of the industrial landscape of the city.
In 1981 it was still extremely unsafe to eat any fish within 40 miles of Cleveland. Although just six years before this, the waters were a rusty yellow in color as the Cuyahoga River empties three miles north into a harbor protected by a six mile long breakwall.
This is on the fringe of Edgewater Park, one of only three parks along the the length of the city’s shoreline, which is a bit to the west. It has a large swimming beach. Today with heavy rains and the runoff, the beach is occasionally closed, but back in 1981 it was permanently polluted in major ways.
Recreation will always take place and poorer folks will use that for survival, too, industry or no industry.
REPUBLIC/LTV STEEL – CHICAGO WORKS (1981 & 2003)
The Chicago Huletts two years after their abandonment. In the background (r.) is the LTV Coke Plant, and (l.) the Acme Steel milll, a bit upriver is seen with its unique coal/coke conveyor bridge over the Calumet iver.
This is the south Hulett looking south on the Calumet River, late at night In a 70 minute time exposure In December, 2003.
The North Hulett looking north on the Calumet River at sunset in September, 2003.
Operator’s Cab, the South Hulett, September, 2003.
Republic Steel Calumet River 1981 – Two barges pass in opposite directions, one empty and one laden with coal. The Hulets are in full operation and unload both the coal and the iron ore for the blast furnace in the background.
Republic Steel – Chicago Works, 1981 – Barges pass one another with the docks of republic Steel at rest. The single blast furnace and coke plant was fully integrated specialty mill with a large wire mill too. Just to the north (l.) is the Interlake Steel Works, that would later become Acme. Republic Steel itself would become LTV Steel in 1984. LTV Steel went into temporary bankruptcy and when it emerged only the coke plantand wire mill remained open for business until 2001. The site is fully demolished today.
The docks had separate iron ore and coal bridges and only coal would arrive by barge from downriver Illinois mines.
The Huletts unload coal barges along the Calumet River, as the coal bridge distributes fresh coal for storage in the coal yard for eventual conversion into coke at the plant behind the left Hulett. The large checkered tank is a gas holder on the edge of the coke plant.
In 1981 a Hulett rises out of a barge with a ten ton load of coal that is directed by the worker above the clam shell in his operator’s cab. These Huletts lasted the longest – 2001 – because they were the cheapest but most effective way to unload barges on a river.
The Lake Wabush being cleaned of iron ore at the old Pennsylvania Ore Docks in Cleveland in 1980. These four Huletts were big and unloded ore constantly because it fed an ore storage yard, unattached to any blast furnaces, where the ore was shipped by boat or rail to the blast furnaces, as close as, three miles away, up the Cuyahoga River.
They were impressive, that’s probably why many think that these were the last huletts, but the last ones were in Chicago along the Calumet where LTV Steel once stood.
Another contributing factor was that Cleveland was always the home of the huletts because their original manufacturing plant was there.
The home of the Huletts was this manufacturing and fabricating plant on East 71st Street and Central Avenue, whiich had still been functioning up until 2012, as a maker of railroad switching and spcialty raiil connections. It was Russian comapny as well as a union shop.
In 2019 an entertainment company from Florida bought the building to use as a warehouse and storage facitlty, but it fell through, just as they began clean-up work in 2020.
The McDowell-Wellman Company would manufacture and fabricate all the parts for the Huletts at this location, then trains would come in and be loaded with the Huletts and their parts, then head out on a trunk line going east and west, right outside the door.
Obviously, these cabooses, obsolete technology, are just being stored here, but these are the same trestles that used to be loaded, by the shop cranes, on to rail cars with all the parts to be assembled as a Hulett. Today, we commonly marvel, over our technology and devices. I don’t think 110 years ago they were much different, and the fact that McDowell-Wellman Corporation could fabricate some of the biggest machinery in the world and then ship it out from their main plant, must’ve been the same sort of experience as far as new technology is concerned, as we have today, where things just became quicker to build and China demonstrated the, on an infrastructure level, all the old American marvels, are miniscuel.