Summer vacation time is wrapping up for the year, and we're getting into the school spirit with a back to school season issue of Lukens Life from September 1954.
This issue's cover celebrated the "crowded football stadiums and snappy bands" of Scott High School with the school band's majorettes and drum major (also drum major of the Lukens band).
Lukens Steel Company was a medium-sized producer of specialty steel products and one of the top three producers of steel plate in the United States. The company operated continuously out of its Coatesville, Pennsylvania site since 1810 and was one of the few successful survivors of the many nineteenth-century iron works that once dotted Southeastern Pennsylvania.
It is also notable for being the first industrial company in the United States led by a woman, Rebecca Lukens (1794-1854). It was controlled by members of the Pennock, Lukens and Huston families in direct succession for over 180 years. After eighty years as a partnership of the Lukens and Huston families, the firm was incorporated as the Lukens Iron and Steel Company on February 5, 1890, but was later reincorporated as the Lukens Steel Company on January 17, 1917 to finance growth opportunities created by defense work during World War I.
After the war, the steel industry nationwide entered a period of stagnation. The American shipbuilding industry, long a Lukens mainstay, collapsed. In 1925, management of the company was handed to Robert W. Wolcott (1892-1982), a son-in-law of the Huston family. Wolcott was an aggressive salesman who cultivated new markets, turning Lukens into a specialized manufacturer of hot rolled plates and fabricated products made from plates. By the late sixties, Lukens had emerged out of stagnation and began a modest diversification effort, leading to an all-time peak in production to 897,000 tons in 1969.
In 1974, the retirement of Chairman Charles Huston, Jr. ended over 180 years of direct family management. Charles L. Huston III, the last member of the Lukens-Huston family to serve with the company, retired in 1991. In 1998, the company was sold to Bethlehem Steel Corporation, becoming its Lukens Plate Division. Following the Bethlehem Steel bankruptcy of February 15, 2001, the Lukens plant was among assets sold to International Steel Group, Inc., of Cleveland on May 7, 2003.
Much of history is reflected in Hagley's Lukens Steel Company newsletters (Accession 2020.209), an online collection of the employee newsletter of the Lukens Steel Company produced between 1935 and 1989. The issues include information about the Lukens community; retirement, engagement, and wedding announcements of Lukens employees; and other relevant industry news.
Additional archival material about the company can also be found in our Lukens Steel Company photographs and audiovisual materials digital collection, which includes selections from the Lukens Steel Company photographs (Accession 1972.360) collection and a selection of films produced or collected by Lukens.