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Please share this story with your local newspapers, heritage networks, and on your blogs! Show your support for the preservation of America's industrial heritage as a common sense measure of respect for our past and sustainable plans for our economic and cultural future. Contact us with questions at savebethsteel@gmail.com.
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Andrew, thanks for your comments through the website. We tried to reply but it bounced back! Email us at savebethsteel@gmail.com or call Dana at 315-525-7474 to get involved.
Quotes of Support
"During the 35 years that I taught American and Modern architecture courses at UB I have seen too many fine buildings representing the city's and the region's stratified history lost to specious demolitions. In fact, examples of Beaux-Arts classicism -- the hallmark style of the peak years of Buffalo's and Lackawanna's heyday -- are particularly rare. Just as the headquarters building originally represented the public face of this once flourishing industry so it should continue to represent what was. I fully support the efforts to save this building and see it restored to some sensible alternative use. - Jack Quinan, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and Senior Curator, Darwin Martin House
"I am a forth generation Lackawanna resident. Also a forth generation steelworker. I'm still employed at the lackawanna bar mill now called republic. My father was an asst roller and worked in the tandem mill. He also worked in the coke ovens. My grandfather (his father) started on the cutting line and then was a foreman in the strip mill. My great grandfather was a stove tender in blast furnace and a pipe fitter at the plant. Even my great grandma worked in the plant during the war in the bar mill as a matter of fact in the same building i still work today!! Lackawanna is in my veins to say the least. I look at the old office building in aww and know its somewhere where my whole family has set foot there." - Andrew, Lackawanna resident
"In Rochester, we lost the "structurally sound" Cataract Brewery buildings last year in order for the Genesee Brewery to create yet another parking lot. Despite the fact that we had engaged a developer and had created realistic and feasible plans to put a new roof on one of the structures, place windows in each opening, clean up the exterior, and provide lighting -- all efforts with an eye toward land banking -- once the mayor and several neighborhoods had their way, there was no turning back the machine. And all of this effort, despite the fact that the Rochester Preservation Board voted unanimously to Landmark the buildings. In interviews since the demolition, a great amount of media outlets and radio hosts continue to claim that the Cataract Buildings were on the verge of collapse and that there were no viable offers to purchase the buildings! Not true. Do not let this happen to Bethlehem Steel." - Joel Helfrich, Rochester, NY
"If we let this building be destroyed or sit in decline as the owners have let it, we are saying we do not care about our past or our rich cultural heritage, therefore we do not care about building our cultural tourism industry and other industries that will spring up as a result of beautifying our urban landscape and preserving our cultural icons. And as a result we are saying we do not care about our community now or in the future." - Spenser Morgan
"We foresee a bright future at this most historic site of our shared cultural heritage, and will do what we can to support and promote the rehabilitation of the building. The building can and should be part of the complete revitalization of the the Lake Erie waterfront." - The Board of Directors of the Steel Plant Museum of Western New York, in a letter to the Mayor of Lackawanna
"I am a Canadian that has been following your fight to save this beautiful building from the beginning and I applaud your efforts. I cannot fathom that someone would want to destroy such a beautiful building that is entrenched with the history of Lackawanna/Buffalo region. I am deeply saddened that the Bethlehem Steel Admin Building will be wiped off the Lacakwana/Buffalo landscape forever, its legacy kept alive through stories, archive photos and people's memories. The biggest shame is that I wanted to go out and see this building in person one day! I can only wish that this building saw an alternative fate." - Matthew Zambri on Facebook
"I am very happy someone is doing something to save this beautiful building. It broke my heart when I heard they were going to tare her down. This is an important architectural design and one of its kind. Future architects and artists will lose a treasure if she is destroyed. Not to mention her value as a tourism attraction for Lackawana. People already come from all over the world to see her beautiful Botanical Gardens and the Basilica. Why not direct them to our pretty Lansing C. Holden building and our canals and lake parks? If this building dies so does an opportunity to show the world we have such landmarks of beauty." - Lisa Willis on Facebook
"In speaking to residents of Lackawanna, specifically those living in Bethlehem Park who are former steel plant workers and their families, there was overwhelming support, as you saw via our change.org petition, to save the building. It is beautiful, one-of-a-kind and NOT beyond rehabilitation and reuse. Bethlehem Steel is not only Lackawanna’s history; it is also this country’s. Please respect our heritage.. your heritage.. and the legacy that has been left for us." - Lisa Perillo, in an email to the Mayor of Lackawanna, NY
"This is a very sad legacy for you as Mayor. It saddens me to see the needless destruction of a beautiful piece of history. This is Lackawanna's character. This building is the kind of building that has the potential to make Lackawanna special and set it apart from other suburbs. Modern developments are boring and ugly. Reuse of this building would be so much better. Please rethink your decision while you have the chance." - Elsa J. Schmidt, Esq., in an email to the Mayor of Lackawanna, NY
"Here in Alaska, just outside of Fairbanks is an historical gold dredge site. A tour through the dredge has been a tourist attraction for many years. It's called Gold Dredge #8. I was impressed and amazed when the tour guide told us all the steel to build it came from Bethlehem Steel." - Linda Romanowski Morrisette, in a Facebook comment
"This is still in the hands of Lackawanna, where there are few preservationists and many who just don’t understand how this building could be the centerpiece for revitalizing their city and that stretch of industrial Lake Erie. Please, help all you can." - Will Harnack, Village of Lancaster, NY, Historic Preservation Commission
"The first step in any place’s recovery is embracing and preserving its identity. The empty Bethlehem building is not an embarrassing symbol of decline. It is emblematic of the place which produced the steel for everything from the WWII battleships that obliterated tyranny to the vehicles that powered America’s auto industry. What’s not to be proud of?" - Donn Esmonde, The Buffalo News
"One of Buffalo’s great shames is the 1950 demolition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building. But it also has some significant saves, like Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building. Even children gasp at its ornate engravings and carvings of terra cotta and copper. That building is on a different tour I give, one I’d like to be able to add the Bethlehem Steel Building to. The field where the Larkin Building’s broken pieces were dumped and buried is on the way to the Bethlehem Steel Building. Please help so that my tour’s grand finale isn’t a similar site in Lackawanna." - Erin St. John Kelly, OpEd for The Buffalo News
"The blast furnaces, tall chimneys and grimy buildings are gone, and some would say good riddance. But the elegant and dignified Administration Building, which has stood since the earliest days of the company, should be seen as a symbol honoring all those generations of men and women who worked so hard to support their families and to raise their children to find their own successes and accomplishments. There could be no more beautiful reminder and memorial." - Mary Horowitz, The Buffalo News, Letter to the Editor
Great buildings, even buildings that have endured years of neglect deserve to remain intact whenever possible. When thinking about matters like these, I like to keep the medical concept of 'first do no harm' at the top of my mind. The Bethlehem Steel building is not a symbol of failure. It is a reminder of a glorious past, and something worth protecting for our future. I understand there is money to be made by demolishing this building, but there is little use for an empty lot at the expense of such a beautiful building that in any other city would have already been put to better use. Please, give this time to get better. Once it is gone, it can never come back, and as we've seen with other long lost buildings in WNY, there is always regret. - Mike Baco, WNY resident, in an email to the Mayor of Lackawanna
"The State Historic Preservation Office has determined that the building is structurally sound and there's no reason it needs to come down. There's no reason for the mayor to be pushing for this demolition at this point." -Dana Saylor, Historian, Old Time Roots
"I don’t see the need to tear it down. It’s a national landmark, it’s part of our history here in Buffalo.” - Joe Peluso, son of a former Bethlehem Steel employee
“It’s not going to come back to that or anything, but we have to do something to tie Lackawanna in to all the good stuff happening in South Buffalo here. This would do it for us.” - Andrea Haxton, former Councilmember, City of Lackawanna
I'm Steel Standing 