Homestead pump house

In the summer of 1892 the Homestead Works, the Carnegie steel mill on the Monongahela at Munhall, locked its union out of the plant. Henry Clay Frick, who ran the company, hired guards from the Pinkerton agency to take the mill back. On 6 July they came up the river to land at the pump house, and the locked-out workers were waiting on the bank. The fight lasted through the day. The workers held the bank. They lost the strike.

The pump house is the brick building at that landing. It is still standing, and Rivers of Steel holds it. Up the hill, the Bost Building was the strikers’ headquarters that same week, and it is still standing too. Ghost stories were told at the pump house long after the week was over.

Sources

• Rivers of Steel, the Pump House
• Battle of Homestead Foundation