HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Bost Building

Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Completed, early 1892. Through that summer, it was headquarters for the strike committee of the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers. Telegraph lines installed here transmitted the news from journalists who were covering the Homestead Strike.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

Completed in early 1892, the Bost Building became the nerve center of one of the most consequential labor battles in American history. That summer it housed the strike committee of the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers, and the telegraph wires strung into it carried dispatches from journalists covering the Homestead Strike to newspapers nationwide. From this address, the workers' cause was argued to the wider public even as the confrontation with Carnegie Steel turned violent.

Why it matters

The building is a rare surviving witness to the Homestead Strike, a defining clash in the long struggle between organized labor and industrial capital in Gilded Age America.

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Related events

  • ยท Homestead Strike

Themes & tags

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