Then & Now: Illinois Steel Company Offices - Joliet

Joliet is known as the “City of Steel” because the town was a major steel-producing center for many years.

During the last part of the 19th century, the Chicago area became one of the leading centers of iron and steel production.

The growth of this industry was a combination of entrepreneurial spirit, local raw materials, and geographical advantages linked to the waterways.

In 1869, the Union Coal, Iron & Transportation Company developed an iron works on Collins Street. By 1873, the company had reorganized as the Joliet Iron & Steel Company, and its 90-acre site included two blast furnaces, two five-ton Bessemer converters, an iron rail-making mill, and a steel rail mill.

By the end of the 1880s, local and national mills started expanding and consolidating efforts.

One of the first great mergers occurred in 1889 when most of the area mills combined to form a new entity, the Illinois Steel Company, and eventually the company was bought by the United States Steel Corporation.

Between 1869 and 1930, the Joliet Iron and Steel Works employed thousands of Joliet-area residents, most of them immigrants from Poland, Sweden and Slovenia, who worked and produced iron and steel products, including rails for the nation’s growing railroad system.

By the 1930s, the operations became unprofitable and the plant’s six major blast furnaces were demolished, leaving only foundations.

The Then photograph shows the Illinois Steel Company office building that was constructed in a Neoclassical Romanesque architectural style in 1891.

The large arched entryway faces Collins Street, and the limestone exterior and dentilated gabled roofline pediment still are visible in the Now photograph.

The Joliet Steel Company Main Office is considered a local landmark and is part of the larger Joliet Steel Works complex, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.