Homestead, on the Monongahela River, a handful of miles from downtown Pittsburgh but isolated physically and psychologically from the newness and shininess of that downtown, is down on its luck.
The Homestead Works, which was owned by the United States Steel Corporation (now USX), was for decades perhaps America's premiere steel mill, surely the best known. It is closed. This summer, men with acetylene torches and earth- and equipment-moving machines came to tear down the mill, or most of it.
Other businesses also have been closed, home values have fallen, and there is, on Eighth Avenue, the main thoroughfare, and often on residential streets, an atmosphere of scruffiness and neglect.
Homestead's population peaked at 20,452 in 1920. Its 2016 estimated population is 3,161 -- a drop of 16,990 (83%).
‘I Don’t Even Know What to Think’: The Whiplash of Watching the Election Results. (The New York Times, 1/7/2018, reportimg from Homestead, Pa.)
Like many of the people around her at the party, Ms. Dabruzzo, 48, had never before experienced an election this way. She had voted before, sent money to candidates a time or two, maybe put up a sign.
But this election had consumed her lunch hours, nights, weekends and holidays. On Oct. 1, she counted: 1,347 postcards, most of them written at night while her husband was at work and she sat in front of “The Rachel Maddow Show.” They were sent to voters in a neighboring congressional district. She estimated she wrote and sent another thousand in the weeks after that. Later that month, she took a week’s vacation from her job to go with her husband, Jim, 45, an X-ray technologist, to knock on doors in the district, hundreds of them.
They were both brand-new to the game, and they both loved it.
Other disappearing cities and boroughs of the Keystone State
Aliquippa. (1/12/2019)Ambridge. (1/17/2019)
Arnold. (1/18/2019)
Braddock. (1/19/2019)
Bradford, (1/20/2019)
Carbondale. (1/21/2019)
Charleroi. (1/22/2019)
Chester. (1/23/2019)
Clairton. (1/24/2019)
Coraopolis. (1/25/2019)
Dickson City. (1/26/2019)
Donora. (1/27/2019)
Duquesne. (1/28/2019)
Farrell. (1/29/2019)
Johnstown. (1/6/2019)
Pittsburgh. (1/13/2019)
Scranton. (1/14/2019)
Other U.S. disappearing cities:
Baltimore, Maryland. (12/31/2018)
Benton Harbor, Michigan. (1/15/2019)
Buffalo, New York, (1/8/2019)
Cairo, Illinois. (1/5/2019)
Cleveland, Ohio (1/2/2019)
Detroit, Michigan. (1/1/2019)
East St. Louis, Illinois. (1/11/2019)
Flint, Michigan. (1/7/2019)
Gary, Indiana. (1/4/2019)
St. Louis, Missouri. (1/2/2019)
Wheeling, West Virginia. (1/16/2019)
Youngstown, Ohio. (1/9/2019)
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