I have been on the AIST mailing list for some time, I recently glanced at an email advertising their annual directory.
This got me thinking – it would be pretty interesting to get a hold of an older directory and see what info could be had regarding Acme/Interlake. So off to eBay I went.
I found a number of them, I was most interested in approx 1960-2000. That narrowed the field but it narrowed more due to price! Some of these are selling for what seems like exorbitant costs. But I was lucky to find the 1967 directory (an ideal year for me) for about $16. It proved to be a worthwhile experiment!
It started with some general info about the corporation.
Then it moved onto the three divisions scattered around the SE side. For simplicity sake, they integrated the coke and furnace plants onto a single page/entry. I was a bit disappointed that more specific info on the coke plant BP facilities wasn’t specified. Interesting that they refer to the general BP plant as the ‘benzol (benzene/toulene) plant’, which is a bit of an oversimplification. Never came across that before. Further down we will see that the BP plants at the Ohio Interlake coke plants are specified as by Koppers. No OEM is mentioned here, perhaps because our coke plant was a bit more piecemeal, with a variety of different OEMs.
The info on the blast furnaces is in conflict with the only other source of information I know of. As the ‘A’ furnace was rebuilt in 1953 to unknown dimensions, we cannot compare there. However the ‘B’ furnace was still original in 1967 to the best of my knowledge, yet the book claims it was slightly smaller in diameter and volume.
And onto Riverdale, with some very detailed info on the rolling mills.
And onto the other iron making facilities that Interlake ran at that time. Note that the Zenith plant is not mentioned, it closed just 5 years before this directory was published. Much more detailed info is given on the BP plant for these facilities, interesting that Toledo has mixed (Koppers and Wilputte) batteries – and 57 ovens? What an odd number.
I did not notice until days after I did these initial scans above, this section at the back. Conveniently, Acme is first due to alphabetical order!
I did also look up the other SE side facilities. Rather than share all those scans as well, I did put together this quick spreadsheet for easy means to compare and contrast. South Works of course dwarfs the others, but I was a bit shocked to find they did not have a coke facility on their sprawling property. Imagine how much coke would be required for 12 blast furnaces! I have to wonder how much Interlake coke they might have used. Interesting to learn that Wisconsin Steel right across the street was very similar size and function to Interlake’s Chicago operation.
[For simplicity sake I have combined all three Chicago Interlake divisions into one column.]
