Neville Island coke, cement, and chemical history

From American Steel & Wire to Shenango, Calgon, Kosmos, and Aristech · September 2026

The east-end Neville Island industrial complex began with an American Steel & Wire blast furnace, became Davison Coke & Iron’s coke, iron, and cement works, and operated for decades as Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical. The later names still used on HART — Shenango, Calgon, Kosmos, and Aristech — are the pieces of that one plant.

How the plant worked

The east end of Neville Island was one industrial machine.

Coke and iron. Bituminous coal is baked in by-product ovens into metallurgical coke. The coke, plus iron ore and limestone flux, goes into a blast furnace to make pig iron. The ovens also make a rich chemical off-gas. That coupling lasted on Neville Island into the late 1980s. Pig iron stopped around 1990–91; coke then ran as a merchant product for other steelmakers’ blast furnaces until January 2016.

Cement from slag. Molten blast-furnace slag is the leftover calcium-silicate glass from ironmaking. Ground and used as a pozzolan, it is a cement ingredient. National Bureau of Standards testing identified Green Bag portland-pozzolan as a Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical product “in which the pozzolanic agent is a blast furnace slag.” Bureau of Mines yearbooks describe the Neville Island works making mostly slag portland cement by the wet process, with limestone barged down the Monongahela from a Green Bag mine near Morgantown. Davison built the cement plant next to the old American Steel & Wire furnace in 1929 because the iron works supplied slag and the river supplied stone.

Chemicals from coke-oven gas and tar. A by-product coke plant recovers tar, ammonia, and light oils (benzene, toluene, xylene). Naphthalene from tar is the classic feedstock for phthalic anhydride, used in plasticizers and alkyd resins. That chemistry put a 1956 Lummus phthalic plant and a 1959 maleic-anhydride unit on a coke-and-iron property, produced PC&C’s coal-tar epoxy coating patents, and later appears in USS Chemicals / Aristech records as phenolic resins, maleic anhydride, and a “Tar Ben Plant.” Activated carbon is the other coal product: in 1942 the government asked Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical to replace coconut-shell carbon in military gas masks with bituminous-coal granular carbon — the line that became Calgon.

Coal in, coke and iron out; slag to cement; tar and light oil to chemicals; coal to carbon.

Overview

Around 1900, American Steel & Wire bought former farmland on the southern and eastern end of Neville Island, built a blast furnace, and built its own industrial railroad, the Pittsburgh & Ohio Valley. In 1929 Davison Coke & Iron bought that furnace property and built new coke ovens and a cement plant. Davison was reorganized out of bankruptcy in 1936 as Pittsburgh Coke & Iron Company. After chemicals were added around 1940, the firm took the name Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical (PC&C), commonly dated 1942.

During the 1960s PC&C broke apart:

BranchSequenceHART name
Coke & ironPC&C → Shenango (1962) → DTE Energy (2008) → last coke 6 January 2016Shenango Coke Works
Ingot moldsShenango-Penn Mold (1939) at 3100 Grand Avenue, west end → foundry closed January 1990. Hot metal came from the east-end furnaces. This is not the 1962 coke-and-iron purchase.—
CementGreen Bag → Marquette (1961) → Lone Star (1982) → Kosmos (by 1996) → Eagle Materials (2020); now a terminalKosmos Cement
Activated carbonPC&C Activated Carbon → Pittsburgh Activated Carbon → Calgon (1965)Calgon Carbon
Industrial chemicalsPC&C chemicals → U.S. Steel / USS Chemicals (1966) → Aristech (1986) → Mitsubishi-backed buyout (1990) → Sunoco (1 Jan 2001) → plasticizer business to BASF (2004); plant to Ashland (2007)Aristech Plastics

Timeline

DateEvent
Dec 1899American Steel & Wire announces a Neville Island furnace plant. Pittsburgh & Ohio Valley Railway incorporated 5 December 1899.
1900–1902AS&W buys about 182 acres of former farmland and builds a blast furnace. P&OV builds about 11 miles of industrial track on company land, interchanging with the Pittsburgh, Chartiers & Youghiogheny (PC&Y).
1901American Steel & Wire becomes a U.S. Steel subsidiary.
1918–1919U.S. Ordnance Department commandeers P&OV for a planned Neville Island ordnance works; property returned 1 July 1919.
1928Davison Coke & Iron Company incorporated (Pennsylvania filing 29 August 1928).
1929Davison buys the old AS&W blast-furnace property and builds new coke ovens and a cement plant.
~1930Cement operations underway. The coke ovens and chemical works that later became Shenango date from about this time.
1939Shenango-Penn Mold buys the west-island ingot-mold foundry (3100 Grand Avenue). It is running through the 1940s. It is not the east-end coke works, which is still Pittsburgh Coke & Iron.
1932–1935Davison in financial distress. Creditors Hillman Coal & Coke and W.J. Rainey form Neville Coke & Chemical to hold claims. Davison files a 77B petition in 1935.
31 Jan 1936Bankruptcy reorganization consummated. Davison amends its charter and becomes Pittsburgh Coke & Iron Company.
1940Chemical manufacture added to coke, iron, and cement. A 1940 annual report is still titled Pittsburgh Coke & Iron.
~1942The company operates as Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical. Wartime contract for coal-based granular activated carbon for gas masks.
1949–1955Agricultural Chemicals Division manufactures pesticides on Neville Island.
5 Jul 1951New York Times (6 July): PC&C registers 140,243 shares of common, one-for-four rights offering, to finance doubling Neville Island pig-iron output from 300,000 to 600,000 net tons a year. Scan of the page.
From 1952Industrial wastes buried in trenches on the west end — later the Ohio River Park Superfund site.
~1952Second blast furnace in service, matching the announced doubling of pig-iron capacity.
1956Chemical & Engineering News: new Lummus phthalic-anhydride plant on Neville Island.
1959Chemical Week (24 Oct): 20-million-lb/year maleic-anhydride unit approved at the main plant.
1960Activated Carbon Division pioneers granular activated carbon for drinking-water treatment.
1960–1961PC&C agrees to sell wholly owned Green Bag Cement Co. to Marquette Cement.
1962Shenango Furnace purchases the coke-and-iron operations.
1964–1966Industrial-chemical business enters U.S. Steel. USS Chemicals Division formed 1966.
1965Calgon Corporation acquires Pittsburgh Activated Carbon Company.
1977–1999West-end dump donated as Ohio River Park; toxins found 1979; Superfund 1990; cleanup 1998–1999.
1982Lone Star Industries agrees to buy Marquette, then a Gulf & Western cement subsidiary.
1986USX transfers USS Chemicals assets, including Neville Island, to newly formed Aristech Chemical Corporation.
1987Pennsylvania PUC records cement truck shipments originating at Lone Star Cement, Neville Island.
13 Jun 1988Shenango, Inc. pleads guilty to Clean Water Act discharges. EPA still describes the Neville Island plant as producing coke and pig iron with a blast furnace and coke ovens.
Jan 1990Plant veterans date the shutdown of Shenango’s west-island ingot-mold foundry (3100 Grand Avenue) to January 1990. That foundry was a 1939 Shenango-Penn Mold plant, fed by hot metal from the east-end furnaces; it is not the coke works. TRI releases from the foundry division collapse in 1990.
1990–mid 1991East-end blast furnaces taken off. The iron-department general foreman dates the iron-department close and the sale of the pig-casting machine to this window: he left Neville Island in March 1991 and was plant manager of Maryland Pig Services at Sparrows Point from July 1991. A 5 December 1990 Post-Gazette mill-closure map is described as accompanying an article on shuttering a Neville Island blast furnace; that page has not been transcribed here. Coke continues as a merchant product.
1990Mitsubishi-backed management buyout takes Aristech private (tender completed 7 March 1990).
Apr 1995Aristech sells unsaturated polyester resin and maleic-anhydride units on Neville Island to Ashland; keeps the plasticizer plant.
By 1994–1996Kosmos Cement operates a Pittsburgh cement plant. Allegheny County (1996) names Kosmos owner/operator of Portland cement production at 200 Neville Road.
1 Jan 2001Sunoco buys Aristech from Mitsubishi for $695 million. The five plants in the deal include Neville Island, PA.
Jan 2004Sunoco sells the phthalate plasticizer business to BASF. Neville Island remains with Sunoco and toll-manufactures plasticizers for BASF.
By 31 Mar 2007Sunoco stops manufacturing plasticizers at Neville Island.
Dec 2007Ashland buys the facility from Sunoco and uses it as a terminal for BASF product shipping.
2008DTE Energy acquires Shenango Incorporated.
6 Jan 2016Last coke produced at Shenango (the 56-oven battery). Pig iron had already been gone about 25 years. Stacks imploded May 2018. Lindy Paving buys the site November 2020.
9 Mar 2018Kuraray completes acquisition of Calgon Carbon.
Mar 2020Eagle Materials closes on the Kosmos Cement business, including the Pittsburgh terminal at 200 Neville Road.

1. American Steel & Wire (c. 1899–1929)

Neville Island was still known as Pittsburgh’s “market basket” when wire and steel capital arrived. In late 1899 American Steel & Wire announced a furnace plant on the island. Contemporary newspapers described a large project — six 800-ton Bessemer furnaces, 400 acres, and 5,000 jobs. The plant that was built was a blast furnace on about 182 acres of former farmland on the southern tip, purchased in 1900.

The Pittsburgh & Ohio Valley Railway was incorporated 5 December 1899, wholly owned by American Steel & Wire, built February 1900–October 1902 on AS&W land, and interchanged with the PC&Y on the island. In 1901 AS&W itself was folded into the new United States Steel Corporation. During World War I the Ordnance Department commandeered P&OV (20 September 1918–1 July 1919) for a planned island ordnance plant.

By 1916 other firms on the island were making pig iron, scrapping steel, refining oil, and making concrete. The AS&W furnace site is the physical ancestor of the later coke, cement, and chemical complex.

2. Davison Coke & Iron (1929–1936)

Davison Coke & Iron Company was incorporated in 1928. In 1929 it bought the old American Steel & Wire blast furnace and built new coke ovens and a cement plant on the property.

The Tax Court and Third Circuit later described the company in the mid-1930s as a Pennsylvania corporation with a by-product coke plant and blast furnace on Neville Island, buying coal principally from W.J. Rainey, Inc. and Hillman Coal & Coke. The Hillman interest remains in this story through PC&C, the later park donation, and Calgon’s ancestry.

The Depression hit hard. A 1932 out-of-court plan failed. In 1935 Davison filed under Bankruptcy Act §77B. Final decree 31 January 1936. The reorganized company issued new common stock and debentures and amended its charter to the name Pittsburgh Coke & Iron Company.

3. Pittsburgh Coke & Iron, then Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical

Pittsburgh Coke & Iron is the company name from 1936 into the early 1940s. A 1940 annual report still uses it. Chemical products were added in 1940. University of Pittsburgh cataloging and Calgon’s corporate history treat Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical as the wartime identity, from about 1942.

By the 1950s PC&C was a diversified coal-chemicals company: phthalic anhydride (1956 Lummus plant), maleic anhydride (1959), coal-tar epoxy protective coatings, granular activated carbon from bituminous coal, and pesticides (1949–1955).

4. Coke and iron → Shenango

Shenango was founded in 1962 when Shenango Furnace purchased Pittsburgh Coke and Chemical’s coke-and-iron works. Coke ovens and chemical operations on that site dated from about 1930. In July 1951 PC&C registered a rights offering of 140,243 common shares to pay for construction that would raise pig-iron output from the Neville Island blast furnaces from 300,000 to 600,000 net tons a year — a second furnace, in service about 1952. A 1963 Commercial and Financial Chronicle note says the prior year’s PC&C figures still included the former Coke and Iron Division, by then part of Shenango Inc., a 50% unconsolidated subsidiary.

Shenango kept the blast furnaces. Pig iron was still a Neville Island product in the late 1980s. On 13 June 1988, when Shenango pleaded guilty to Clean Water Act discharges, EPA described the plant as producing coke and pig iron “using a blast furnace, coke ovens, and other ancillary equipment.” Molten iron also fed a separate ingot-mold foundry on the west end. That foundry is the next section. It is not this plant.

The furnaces themselves came off around the same time. There is no company filing that names the last cast. What is on record is the close of the iron department and the departure of the pig machine. The iron-department general foreman dates his Neville Island iron work through March 1991 and writes that after the iron department closed, National Material bought the pig-casting machine and he rebuilt it at Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point as Maryland Pig Services, where he was plant manager from July 1991. Plant veterans say the stacks were taken off in stages. A 5 December 1990 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette mill-closure map is described, by someone who looked at that page, as accompanying an article on shuttering a Neville Island blast furnace; that page has not been transcribed here. After the iron department closed, the east-end plant was a merchant coke works only. EPA later lists a single 56-oven, four-meter coke battery. These are not Shenango Furnace’s Sharpsville stacks, which were banked in 1968.

DTE Energy bought Shenango in 2008. Citing the North American steel downturn, DTE announced closure on 17 December 2015. The last coke came off on 6 January 2016 — that is the coke date, not pig iron. Demolition included the May 2018 stack implosion. Lindy Paving closed on the site in November 2020.

Furnaces A and B

On the island the two stacks were A and B, beside the coke battery. A stood at the pig machine. B stood beyond it. A was cut up first and remained in place while B kept casting. Stanley Quick, 38 years at the plant, describes that same order. Mark Connolly's scrap photo shows A going out, the East Runner to the right, and B still up in the background.

Ore and furnace coke were for these furnaces. The P&OV shoved ore to the car dumper and took coke from the battery to track F1. The west-end foundry received the hot iron, in ladles. The track-level account is in the Pittsburgh & Ohio Valley Railway article.

In 1958 Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical spent about $2.5 million to adapt one of the two furnaces to make ferromanganese and spiegeleisen as well as pig iron. Half of that was a gas-cleaning system. The note does not name the furnace (Chemical & Engineering News, 17 February 1958).

HART's Shenango map is the coke works after the iron department closed: tracks K-1 and K-2. The ore dumper, A and B, the pig machine, and the ladle run to the foundry are not on that plan.

Ingot molds (Shenango-Penn, 1939–1990)

The ingot-mold foundry is a different company and a different end of the island. Shenango-Penn Mold bought it in 1939, at 3100 Grand Avenue on the west end. It was casting molds through the 1940s. In those years the east end was still Pittsburgh Coke & Iron, then Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical. Shenango Furnace did not buy the coke and iron until 1962.

Hot metal for the foundry came from the east-end furnaces. Plant veterans date the foundry shutdown to January 1990. Toxics Release Inventory reports for the foundry division drop from tens of thousands of pounds in 1989 to 5 pounds in 1990. HART does not switch this plant.

5. Cement → Green Bag, Marquette, Lone Star, Kosmos

Green Bag cement used blast-furnace slag as its pozzolan, with limestone barged from a Green Bag mine near Morgantown. After Marquette took over, Bureau of Mines yearbooks still describe mostly slag portland cement by the wet process.

In late 1960 and January 1961, PC&C agreed to sell wholly owned Green Bag Cement Co. to Marquette Cement Manufacturing Co. Marquette became a Gulf & Western subsidiary in 1976 and was sold to Lone Star Industries in 1982. Pennsylvania PUC records show truck shipments originating at Lone Star Cement Company, Neville Island in 1987.

By the mid-1990s Kosmos Cement Company (Southdown 75%, Lone Star 25%) operated cement plants in Kosmosdale, Kentucky, and Pittsburgh. A 1996 Allegheny County / EPA order names Kosmos as owner/operator of Portland cement production at 200 Neville Road. Eagle Materials bought the Kosmos business in 2020. The Kosmos site today is a cement terminal, not a kiln plant.

6. Activated carbon → Calgon

When the United States entered World War II, military gas-mask filters used granular activated carbon made from coconut shells. Faced with a shortage, the government asked Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical to make a substitute from bituminous coal. In 1942 PC&C produced coal-based granular activated carbon. Heat opens the coal’s pore structure; a pound of finished carbon has on the order of a hundred acres of internal surface.

After the war the Activated Carbon Division stayed on the island: the 1955 “Pittsburgh Pulse Bed” for sugar decolorization; granular carbon for drinking-water treatment in 1960; and a 1962 municipal installation of 40,000 pounds for Virginia-American Water Co. The business was organized as Pittsburgh Activated Carbon Company and Calgon Corporation acquired it in 1965. Calgon itself began as the Hagan Corporation (1918) and a boiler-water chemical. Merck bought Calgon in 1968. Management bought the carbon business out of Merck in 1985 as Calgon Carbon Corporation. Kuraray completed its acquisition on 9 March 2018.

The Neville Island plant sits on the southeast corner of the island, east of the Fleming Park Bridge. EPA’s 2001 visit described three operations: carbon reactivation, impregnation and drying, and pellet carbon manufacture. Calgon still lists Neville Island among its U.S. reactivation sites. Spent carbon arrives by rail or truck, is restored, and goes back out for drinking water, wastewater, industrial purification, and odor control.

7. Industrial chemicals → Aristech → Sunoco → BASF / Ashland

Phthalic and maleic anhydride, phenolic-type chemistry, and coal-tar coatings are documented on Neville Island in the PC&C era. United States Steel formed USS Chemicals Division in 1966, and the Neville Island facility was included. In 1986 USX transferred those assets to newly formed Aristech Chemical Corporation.

Aristech as a company made both chemicals and polymers, but the polymer plants were elsewhere. Polypropylene (fibers, carpets, diapers, auto parts, film) was made at Neal, West Virginia, and LaPorte, Texas. Acrylic sheet was made at Florence, Kentucky. Neville Island made plasticizers — organic esters for flexible vinyl (PVC). Aristech’s 1998 filing rates the island plant at 210 million pounds per year, using a batch process, shipped mainly by railcar or truck. Downstream uses: rainwear, toys, boots, flooring, wall coverings, automotive seat and dashboard covers, vinyl roofs, and wire and cable insulation. Phthalic anhydride and 2-ethylhexanol for those esters came from Pasadena, Texas.

In April 1995 Aristech sold its unsaturated polyester resin and maleic-anhydride units on the island to Ashland, keeping the plasticizer plant. A Mitsubishi-backed buyout took Aristech private in 1990. On 1 January 2001 Sunoco bought Aristech from Mitsubishi; Neville Island is named as one of five plants. In January 2004 BASF bought the plasticizer business and the Pasadena plant; Neville Island stayed with Sunoco and toll-made plasticizers for BASF until manufacturing stopped by 31 March 2007. In December 2007 Ashland bought the remaining facility as a BASF shipping terminal.

On HART the plant is named Aristech Plastics, the name it carried from 1986 through 2000. The prototype island plant made plasticizer for flexible PVC, not polypropylene pellets.

8. Pesticides and the west-end dump

PC&C made pesticides from 1949 to 1955. From 1952 into the 1960s, coking sludges, cement wastes, and pesticide wastes went into trenches on the west end of the island. There was no operating successor. The Superfund remedy is a separate land-use story from the east-end plants crews switch.

9. Family tree

American Steel & Wire blast furnace (c. 1900)
        │  1929 sale of furnace property
        ▼
Davison Coke & Iron
  coke ovens + cement plant on the old furnace site
        │  1936 77B reorganization
        ▼
Pittsburgh Coke & Iron
        │  chemicals added ~1940; name PC&C ~1942
        ▼
Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical
        │
        ├── Coke & iron ──► Shenango (1962) ──► DTE (2008)
        │                     last pig iron ~1990–91; last coke 6 Jan 2016
        │                     Lindy Paving 2020
        │
        │   (separate plant, not this split)
        │   Shenango-Penn Mold ingot foundry, 3100 Grand Avenue
        │       1939 purchase → closed January 1990
        │
        ├── Cement (slag portland / Green Bag)
        │       ──► Marquette (1961) ──► Lone Star (1982)
        │       ──► Kosmos production (by 1996)
        │       ──► Eagle Materials terminal (2020)
        │
        ├── Activated carbon ──► Pittsburgh Activated Carbon
        │       ──► Calgon (1965) ──► (Merck, then independent; now Kuraray)
        │
        ├── Industrial chemicals / coatings
        │       ──► U.S. Steel / USS Chemicals (1966)
        │       ──► Aristech (1986)
        │       ──► Mitsubishi MBO (1990)
        │       ──► Sunoco (1 Jan 2001)
        │       ──► plasticizer business to BASF (2004)
        │       ──► plant to Ashland (2007), shipping for BASF
        │
        └── Pesticides (1949–1955) ──► no successor

10. On HART

The island industries crews switch are the surviving trade names of this east-end complex:

The island’s industrial railroad ancestor is American Steel & Wire’s Pittsburgh & Ohio Valley, interchanging with the PC&Y (later Pittsburgh Industrial / Ohio Central / POHC).

Related: Railroads of the Chartiers Valley · POHC line industries, McKees Rocks to Washington

Sources

  1. ExplorePAHistory / TrailLink, “Ohio River Park Superfund Site.” Based on Hugh Gorman, “Manufacturing Brownfields,” Technology and Culture 38, no. 3 (1997). traillink.com
  2. U.S. EPA, Ohio River Park Superfund site history / ROD. NEPIS 91003F6U
  3. Neville Coke & Chemical Co. v. Commissioner, 148 F.2d 599 (3d Cir. 1945) — Davison 77B plan; name change to Pittsburgh Coke & Iron.
  4. ICC/Valuation, Pittsburgh & Ohio Valley Railway (AS&W-owned; PC&Y interchange; 1918–19 Ordnance commandeer).
  5. U.S. EPA, Shenango Incorporated, Neville Island. epa.gov
  6. New York Times, 6 July 1951 — PC&C rights offering to double Neville Island pig iron from 300,000 to 600,000 net tons a year. Scan.
  7. National Bureau of Standards: Green Bag portland-pozzolan, pozzolan = blast-furnace slag.
  8. U.S. Bureau of Mines minerals yearbooks: slag portland at Neville Island; Morgantown limestone barged to the plant.
  9. New York Times, 5 Mar 1982 — Lone Star buys Marquette from Gulf & Western.
  10. Calgon Carbon, History and Timeline. calgoncarbon.com
  11. U.S. EPA, Calgon Carbon Corporation, Neville Island (reactivation, impregnation, pellet plants). epa.gov
  12. Kuraray / Calgon Carbon, 9 March 2018 acquisition. SEC 8-K exhibit
  13. Aristech Chemical Form 10-K (fiscal 1998): Neville Island 210 million lb/year plasticizers for flexible PVC. SEC
  14. Sunoco 8-K: Aristech purchase effective 1 Jan 2001, Neville Island among five plants. SEC
  15. Sunoco 2005 annual report; EPA RCRA PAD000824730 — BASF tolling, Ashland 2007.
  16. DTE Energy Form 8-K, 17 Dec 2015; Beaver County Times, 6–7 Jan 2016 (last coke).
  17. U.S. EPA, Historical Enforcement and Compliance Data on the Petroleum and Coal Product Manufacturing Industry: 13 June 1988 CWA plea; Neville Island “produces coke and pig iron using a blast furnace, coke ovens, and other ancillary equipment.” NEPIS P10157EU
  18. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 December 1990 — mill-closure map. A later note on that page says it accompanied an article on shuttering a blast furnace on Neville Island; the page itself has not been transcribed here. Google News archive
  19. EPA, Technical Support Document for the Iron and Steel Sector (2008): Shenango, Neville Island, listed as one coke battery, not an operating blast furnace. epa.gov
  20. Chemical & Engineering News, 17 February 1958, "Pittsburgh Coke Branches Out": one Neville Island furnace adapted for ferromanganese and spiegeleisen.
  21. Dennis DeBruler, "Neville Island, PA: Shenango Steel Works," Towns and Nature, 17 October 2022: Stanley Quick on A coming down before B, and on the foundry two miles west. towns-and-nature.blogspot.com