Allegheny County
Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed September 24, 1788 out of Westmoreland and Washington counties. Named for the Allegheny River. County seat of Pittsburgh was laid out 1764; became a city in 1816. A center of the iron, steel and other industries and "Workshop of the World."
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Formed in 1788 and named for the Allegheny River, this county grew around Pittsburgh, a settlement laid out in 1764 at the strategic forks of the Ohio. As the 19th century advanced, the city's furnaces and mills made it a titan of iron and steel, earning it the boast "Workshop of the World." Immigrants poured in to feed the industry that armed and built modern America.
Why it matters
Pittsburgh's mills powered the American industrial age, and the county stands as a symbol of how heavy industry transformed the nation's economy and its cities.
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Nearby & related markers
Allegheny County
Pittsburgh, PA
When Allegheny County was carved out of Westmoreland and Washington counties in 1788, its seat at Pittsburgh was already a generation old — laid out in 1764 at the strategic forks where the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the Ohio, a gateway that had drawn soldiers, traders, and settlers pushing west. Incorporated as a city in 1816, Pittsburgh grew into one of the great engines of American industry, its furnaces and mills pouring out the iron and steel that earned the region its "Workshop of the World" reputation. The county's story runs straight from a frontier river junction to the smoke-and-fire heart of the nation's industrial age.
Henry Clay Frick (1848-1919)
Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1946
Henry Clay Frick rose to become one of the titans of Gilded Age Pittsburgh, building a fortune in coke — the refined coal that fed the blast furnaces of the steel age — before helping lead Andrew Carnegie's steel empire. As chairman of Carnegie Steel, his hard line against organized labor helped ignite the violent 1892 Homestead Strike, in which workers and Pinkerton agents fought a deadly pitched battle. Frick later turned his wealth toward philanthropy and art collecting.
United Steelworkers of America
Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1986
In the depths of the Great Depression, organized labor was fighting to gain a foothold in America's mightiest industry. On June 17, 1936, in Pittsburgh's Grant Building, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee was formed to bring the men of the mills into one union. Under its first president, Philip Murray, the effort grew into the United Steelworkers of America, eventually representing more than a million workers across the continent.
Founding of Ironworkers Union
Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1999
On February 4, 1896, sixteen delegates gathered at Moorheads Hall on this site to form the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers. Meeting in Pittsburgh, the heart of America's steel and bridge-building boom, they organized to win better wages and, above all, safer conditions in one of the era's most dangerous trades. By its centennial in 1996 the union counted some 140,000 members.