Rivers of Steel

Rivers of Steel is another relic of the United States Steel Corporation, a once-bustling Pittsburgh steel mill whose only remains today are the Carrie Blast Furnaces. The site was operational from 1907 to 1978, producing steel from its blast furnaces for use in the integrated steel production operations at the Homestead Works across the river. After the Homestead Works closed for good in 1986, the area was designated a Superfund Site due to heavy metal contamination. Furnaces #6 and #7 were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, saved from demolition, and repurposed into the Rivers of Steel attraction that exists today.

I took an unguided photography tour of the site offered through Rivers of Steel, which allows you to wander around the ruins and take pictures wherever you want (certain clearly-marked areas excluded). I brought my Nikon F6 with battery grip and a few rolls of Tri-X 400. I pushed the film to ISO 1600 and developed using Ilford DD-X to keep my shutter speed fast enough for handheld shooting. One thing I noticed while shooting, and especially after developing my film, was that the F6 seemed to back focus in low light about 75% of the time. Maybe I’m just expecting too much from a focusing system that’s the same age as I am, but I was surprised by its inaccuracy. I also tried shooting with my 24mm and 45mm PC-E lenses, but I struggled to manually focus them. I still missed focus on about 25% of the shots I took, even with a magnifying eyepiece. I probably just need more practice. The F6 can’t control electronic aperture lenses like my 19mm PC-E, so only the older 24mm, 45mm, and 85mm PC-E lenses with aperture rings can be used with the camera.

I ended up spending an irresponsible amount of money on eBay for a Type B focusing screen from Japan, which adds a split prism to the F6. Since visiting Rivers of Steel, I haven’t noticed any significant discrepancies in focus between the CAM-2000 AF system and the split prism, but I also haven’t shot in such challenging conditions. While I trust the AF system, the split-prism provides some extra peace of mind that I’m really nailing the focus.

I enjoy shooting locations like Rivers of Steel because there’s a lot to see in a concentrated space. I can walk around and constantly stumble over good compositions, interesting lighting, and unique subjects.

One thing I’ve been trying to improve on is my metering skills. The F6 has an amazing meter in it, just like my trusty D850. Ninety percent of the time, Matrix Metering nails the exposure. However, there are certain situations where an 18% gray exposure just isn’t right for a scene, and as the photographer, you need to recognize when spot metering or exposure compensation is necessary. As resistant as I’ve been to mirrorless cameras (my career involves staring at a screen all day anyway), my z50 has really helped me recognize the immediate need for exposure compensation in certain situations.

Even with ISO 1600 film, I struggled to get a fast enough shutter speed to completely avoid camera shake. These pictures are the best of the bunch between the shaky shots and missed focus. I mainly shot in manual mode and deliberately underexposed many shots since the matrix and center-weighted metering didn’t account for the dark environment.

Author’s Note: You might’ve noticed that I took a break from releasing new articles and blog posts for a few months. It’s been a busy year between traveling to Prague, getting married, and a difficult summer at work. I should be back to our regularly scheduled programming of in-depth projects and bi-monthly blog posts soon. Thanks for sticking around!

Kansas City to Topeka

It turns out that I’m really bad at actually relaxing on vacation, especially when I’m traveling somewhere new. Sitting around the hotel or resort just feels like a wasted opportunity when I could be out hunting down a historic building or exploring off the beaten path. Just this past weekend, I traveled to Cleveland for a Friday work meeting, staying overnight to visit Microcenter and the USS Cod Submarine Memorial on Sunday. If I can leverage a work trip into a vacation, I’m all for it!

Since retiring, my parents have set a goal of visiting every Major League Baseball stadium in the country. I’ve joined them for some of the different stadiums, including trips to Boston, Baltimore, and Seattle/Oakland. When the chance to see the Yankees play the Kansas City Royals came up, I started planning the ultimate 3-day tour of Kansas City, which led to this blog post.

The first point of interest I saw was the iconic “Western Auto” sign that towers 12 floors above Kansas City. The sign is a remnant of the Western Auto Corporation, founded in 1908 by George Pepperdine. What started as a mail-order auto parts business driven by the widespread adoption of the Ford Model T grew into a nationwide chain of auto parts stores. But the building atop which the sign is perched wasn’t built by Western Auto—it was Coca-Cola who chose the site and constructed the office tower. The site was well-suited for Coca-Cola’s West-Central operations and had easy access to nearby Union Station and its railroad tracks. Western Auto eventually purchased the building as their headquarters and erected the sign, which remained behind after the company was acquired by Advance Auto Parts in 1998. It was eventually restored and relit by the condo association that now occupies the building.

The National WWI Museum

Only a short distance away from the Western Auto sign is possibly one of the most architecturally significant structures in Kansas City, the National WWI Memorial. Thanks to a group of prominent Kansas City citizens, millions of dollars were raised by the time ground was broken on the monument in 1921. The site is a mix of Beaux Arts with Egyptian elements like the two guardian sphinxes which flank Liberty Tower, the spire that juts skyward from above the museum. On sphinx shields its face from the horrors of the past, while the other looks towards the future.

The museum has a nice balance of artifacts and historical interpretations, mixing relics of WWI with live effects and video presentations. With so much to look at, you could easily spend all day reading the details behind the artillery, weapons, and personal effects on display throughout the museum. The lower level of the museum showcases random and duplicative artifacts within the collection and gives patrons the opportunity to see curators at work behind-the-scenes. Don’t tap on the glass though, you’ll spook them!

Above ground is the original memorial buildings, which have towering ceilings adorned with murals. Only one of the buildings was open during my visit. The new addition, which holds the museum’s permanent collections, lives within the pedestal below the Liberty Tower. Ascending the elevator to the top of Liberty Tower affords a a great view of Kansas City, Union Station, and the Western Auto sign. If you ever visit Kansas City, I’d argue the WWI Memorial should be top of your list for places to visit.

Brown v. Board of Education NHP

My next stop involved a drive to Topeka, KS to see the Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park. This historic building, formerly the Monroe Elementary School, houses exhibits related to the landmark Supreme Court case, and is one of six segregated schools that are part of the National Historic Park listing. Despite changing hands many times after closing in 1975 due to declining enrollment, the building retains interesting features like the child-sized enamel water fountain in the hallway and the hand-stenciled names above the doors of the auditorium, principal’s office, and classrooms. I found the video presentation that loops in the gymnasium to be quite informative and presented in an interesting format, even if it was a bit dated.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any time to drive through Topeka proper, though the skyline is clearly visible from the school. My hope is that I’ll make it back around someday to properly explore the city. I had one more stop to go before making the drive back to Kansas City for the Yankees/Royals game, which was Harry S. Truman National Historic Site.

Truman National Historic Site

I made it to Independence just as the day wound down and the sun dipped closer to the horizon. I’d just missed the last tour of the Truman house, the interior of which is only accessible with a National Park Ranger guided tour. The visitor’s center occupies an old firehouse in central Independence and stays open later than the outlying sites, so I was able to get my NPS passport stamp and zip through the gift shop. I couldn’t get a good angle on the Truman house in Independence with the setting sun, so I instead opted to drive over to Grandview and see another site within the NHS, Truman’s 1894 farmhouse.

Like the house in Independence, the interior of the Grandview farmhouse is not open to visitors. Only a small chunk of the 600 acre farm remains behind the house - the majority was sold off for development before the NPS acquired the site. You can walk around the property and peer through the windows, but watch out for the aggressive animals that supposedly live under the smoke house out back…

There was one last place I was dying to see before I had to return the rental car and catch my flight back to Newark. I threw my Mavic Classic 3 in the trunk and drove back across Kansas City to The Roasterie, a coffee shop and roaster that has a Douglas DC-3 strapped to the roof. I tried taking a shot with my 19mm PC-E lens but found the drone produced a better picture - being able to fly up high and position the DC-3 against the Kansas City skyline made for a more interesting composition.  I picked up a cup of coffee (that I had to pound back before going through TSA) and a bag of coffee beans for making cold brew at home, though I wish I’d had more time to soak it all in before leaving. The good news is there’s always more history and interesting architecture out there to explore!

USS Cod Submarine Memorial

Although I spent four years at Ohio University in Athens, OH, I somehow never made it all the way up to Cleveland. I love a good museum ship, and I’ve been on a mission since 2021 to collect signatures from the museum curators of ships which have YouTube channels like the USS New Jersey, the Buffalo Naval Park, etc. So when I found out that I needed to be in-office for a work event and saw Cleveland listed as an option, I decided to make an overnight trip of it and get another curator’s signature on my USS New Jersey hat.

The USS Cod Submarine Memorial, located on the shores of downtown Cleveland, is a Gato-class submarine built during WWII that has called the city home since 1959. Commissioned in June 1943 and struck from the naval register in December 1971, the USS Cod saw a long career during which she attacked Japanese shipping during WWII, rescued the crew of a stranded Dutch submarine, and served as a naval training vessel for reservists. She opened as a museum ship in 1976 and is frankly one of the best-preserved and staged ships I’ve visited.

It was a cold and damp February day when I visited the submarine, and a thin sheet of ice on Lake Erie encased the USS Cod. I met up with Paul Farace, Director of the USS Cod Submarine Memorial, who told me a bit about the boat’s history before we climbed aboard. Paul has been with the boat since the beginning, which puts him in a unique position of retelling the stories he’s obtained from first-hand accounts of Cod’s crew. I spent about 4 hours with Paul as we toured the submarine, though I feel like I could’ve easily spent twice that amount of time listening to all the stories Paul has to tell.

Climbing aboard, our first stop was to take a look at Cod’s 5-inch/25-caliber deck gun. The role of submarines post-WWII saw them spending more time submerged than on the surface, and deck guns like the 5-inch/25-caliber became obsolete. Cod’s deck gun is not original to the submarine - luckily the memorial was able to salvage one after she became a museum ship, returning her to the configuration which fits her period of interpretation (early 1950s). The deck gun would be used to attack targets not worth the expenditure of a torpedo, like the ubiquitous Japanese junks of WWII. Some ready-service ammunition for the deck guns would be stored in watertight compartments outside the pressure hull, but the main ammunition stores existed in a compartment below the crew’s mess. In situations where sustained fire was necessary, or to replenish the ready-service ammunition on deck, a scuttle in the overhead allowed the crew to pass shells up through the pressure hull. Cod used her deck guns to sink 26 junks during the war. This achievement is represented by the sampan stenciled on her mast - the martini glass represents the sailors of the Dutch submarine O-19 which the Cod’s crew rescued in July 1945.

Walking along the deck, you pass over some notable features including concave damage to the deck plates sustained from depth charge attacks and evidence of a glancing blow left by enemy gunfire. I might’ve otherwise missed those details if it weren’t for Paul and the USS Cod’s YouTube channel - they cover the “hidden history” of the ship which you wouldn’t notice upon first glance. For example, hiding below the submarine’s deck is a cradle that was intended to hold a liberty launch during peacetime operations. It would be used to ferry crew between the submarine and shore when it was impractical to bring the entire boat into port. While the liberty launch was removed for wartime service and USS Cod never carried one, the cradle was left in place.

One thing you don’t necessarily realize about these submarines is just how much infrastructure is wedged between the pressure hull and deck. If you take a look to the right of the forward escape trunk below-deck, you can catch a glimpse of the bottles which stored compressed air for the 21-inch torpedo tubes.

Life Aboard The USS Cod

One of the coolest features of the USS Cod isn’t something it has, but rather what it lacks - museum-era modification to make the submarine more “visitor friendly” and accessible. Going below decks is accomplished by climbing through the forward and aft torpedo room escape trunks, just like a submariner would’ve when the USS Cod was in service. The ladders are steep and a bit awkward to use, but it’s a unique experience I’ve never had aboard any other museum ship.

Climbing down the escape trunk deposits you in the forward torpedo room. Here you’ll find berthing spaces for the crew and the submarine’s most powerful weapon, the Mark 14 torpedo. My favorite the thing about the USS Cod is how the museum has done such an amazing job filling the space with artifacts and “signs of life” from the Cod’s crew. Period-correct plates and silverware are set out in the crews’ mess, laundry is hung out to dry in the engine room, drinking glasses sit perched in holders next to sinks, and an apron hangs off a mixer in the galley. It almost feels as if the crew dropped what they were doing in 1950 and went ashore just before you boarded.

As we stood outside the galley, Paul recalled a story involving the submarine’s cook during WWII. George Sacco was a baker from Brooklyn who’d never used a commercial mixer before. The brand-new mixer in Cod’s galley worked fine for awhile but started having problems while the submarine was underway. It turned out the crew had forgot to pack the mixer’s brand-new bearings with grease, causing it to seize up. Luckily it worked just fine after greasing the bearings - it worked so well, in fact, that George quickly ran out of space in the bread locker for all the baked goods he was able to churn out of Cod’s galley. Bread lockers (like the one located beneath a bench seat in the crews’ mess) were used to cool and store bread baked aboard the submarine. The crew eventually built an auxiliary bread locker to keep up with the steady stream of backed goods that George made, which can be seen to your left as you walk through the crews’ mess.

Propulsion, Weapons, and Hidden History

Heading back aft takes you past the officers quarters, through the main berthing compartment, and to the control room where the boat was helmed. An off-tour route stop I made with Paul was the conning tower, situated above the control room. Here you could access the bridge through a hatch in the overhead, peer through the two periscopes, and steer the submarine. Somehow there could be 12 men packed into that tiny space during torpedo actions, steering the ship and calculating courses to attack enemy ships. Both of Cod’s periscopes work, and so does her torpedo data computer.

At the heart of the submarine are 4x V16 diesel engines (built in Cleveland) which generate the horsepower needed to drive the electric motors responsible for propelling the ship when surfaced and for charging the submarine’s 252 lead-acid batteries to be used when submerged. What’s remarkable is that the diesel engines are still operational, like many systems aboard USS Cod. Key components of the propulsion system like the lead-acid batteries and propellers have been removed though, so it won’t be possible to take the submarine out for a pleasure cruise on Lake Erie anytime soon.

Further aft is the maneuvering room where electricians control the power output of the diesel engines, using it to charge batteries or turn the USS Cod’s two propellers. A set of oversized control arms allow engineers to control power input and output, and an engine order telegraph allows the maneuvering room to acknowledge orders from the bridge.

Having watched USS Cod’s YouTube series covering the “hidden history” aboard the submarine, part of my mission was to locate the various items talked about in their videos. I’d already recognized some of them when I went aboard the USS Torsk in Baltimore over the summer. I found the signal flare ejectors (one in aft torpedo room, the other in the control room), the emergency ration boxes located in each compartment, and the crew’s 1941 Sears & Roebuck ironing board.

So far I’ve collected Ryan’s autograph from the Battleship New Jersey, Drachinifel, and Paul’s autograph from the USS Cod. I think my next stop will be the Buffalo Naval Park so I can get Shane’s autograph on my hat - stay tuned for a future update!

The Herschell Carousel Company

I’d already ridden six Herschell carousels by the time I heard about the Herschell Carousel Factory Museum. I was working on another project about The E-J Shoe Company, a driving force behind the communities of Endicott and Johnson City in Upstate New York, when I stumbled headfirst into the world of antique carousels. E-J’s namesake George Johnson and family donated Herschell carousels in the Binghamton, NY area and made them free to ride in perpetuity. George Johnson wanted to be sure that no child would be denied the joys of a carousel ride for lack of money like he was in his youth. While taking a spin on one of those six carousels at West Endicott Park, I noticed a hand-painted motif on the carousel that read “Allan Herschell Co. Inc. Builders, N. Tonawanda, N.Y. U.S.A.” A quick Google search led me to the museum, and I knew I had to make a detour to North Tonawanda, NY (near Buffalo) to see where Binghamton’s carousels got their start.

The Herschell name has been associated with many different manufacturers over the years, starting in 1873 with the Armitage Herschell Company. The Buffalo area was a nexus of manufacturing in the early 1900s and the Allan Herschell Company would eventually grow to produce a wide variety of amusement rides including classics like the carousel, miniature trains, and kiddie coasters.

The Herschell Carousel Factory

The story begins with Allan Herschell, an entrepreneur who founded multiple iterations of the Herschell company throughout his lifetime. Around 1880, while on a trip to New York City, Herschell saw a magnificent new amusement ride dubbed the “Riding Gallery”. And what powered this new contraption? A steam engine! As luck would have it, Herschell was already manufacturing steam engines and gears in North Tonawanda. He sensed a business opportunity and returned to North Tonawanda to found the first of his carousel manufacturing ventures.

The Herschell Carousel Factory Museum, which occupies the Herschell Spillman Company’s 1916 factory, offers a glimpse into both the history of Herschell carousels and the manufacturing process used by the Herschell company. The North Tonawanda factory allowed the company to manufacture all components of its carousels in-house: the basswood or poplar animals were crafted by artisans on the carving floor, finished in the paint shop, and shipped out for final assembly via the Lockport Branch of the New York Central Railroad that once ran behind the factory. Allan Herschell also branched out into the internal combustion engine business, producing engines for automotive and aerospace manufacturers like Curtiss and Pierce-Arrow. Those engines were built at the Herschell-Spillman Motor Company Complex, a more modern factory that was recently covered into factory loft apartments and is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Wurlitzer Company, manufacturer of the large band organs which often accompanied carousel rides, had its manufacturing plant not far from the Herschell factory. Wurlitzer produced band organs through the North Tonawanda Barrel Organ Factory until 1939 and closed their North Tonawanda plant in 1973. A collection of master music rolls and other Wurlitzer relics are now on display at the museum. A fun note about the master music rolls - the Wurlitzer system works on a vacuum where punches on a paper music roll allow air to pass through and actuate instruments like drums or bells within the organ. Each master roll was punched by hand and a machine was used to create copies for distribution. The museum still produces copies from their master music rolls on request, which helps preserve historic music while allowing carousel organ enthusiasts to obtain the rolls needed to keep their organs running.

Inside the museum you’ll find an interesting collection of carousels, amusement rides, and band organs which are all restored and operational. The museum owns and operates two carousels: a portable kiddie carousel and a 1916-vintage No. 1 Carousel. Museum staff were happy to demonstrate the organs when I asked about how exactly they worked.

One highlight of the museum is a restored 1916 carousel, and museum admission gets you a few tokens for rides. There were a few things I noticed about the antique 1916 carousel which set it apart from more modern carousels I’ve ridden: for one, the hand-carved horses seem to have more life to them than their modern fiberglass cousins. I also liked the more friendly posture of the horses’ upturned ears, making them look like they’re just happy to be hanging around the carousel. Unfortunately the upturned ear design was abandoned early on because they were grabbed by riders and frequently broken off. There is also a “lovers tub” on the 1916 carousel which allows the rider to spin the tub around “spinning teacups” style. I wish more carousels had interactive features like brass rings or the “lovers tub” - it’d make them more fun to ride. I imagine the brass rings disappeared for insurance reasons.

The Herschell Carousel Company pioneered the iconic “Country Fair” style of horse, which forgoes saddles completely in favor of a more cartoon-style look. Horses were carved from blocks of basswood, chosen because the wood is easy to carve but lightweight and strong. The old paint shop has been converted to house the museum’s historical menagerie collection, which showcases animals ranging from ostriches to dogs. If you’re looking for a fun day trip - especially if you have young kids who can ride the “Kiddie Land Test Park” rides outside - then the Herschell Carousel Factory Museum is worth a stop!