The Atlantic Steel Company was a steel company in Atlanta, Georgia with a large steel mill on the site of today's Atlantic Station multi-use complex.[1][2]

Atlantic Steel Mill
Atlanta Steel Mill, fire map 1911
Atlanta Steel, location 1911

Atlantic Steel's history dated back to 1901 when it was founded as the Atlanta Hoop Company, with 120 employees, and which produced cotton bale ties and barrel hoops. It became the Atlanta Steel Company, and then in December 1915, the Atlantic Steel Company.[3]

From 1908-1922 Thomas K. Glenn was the company's president.[4] A replica of his office exists at the Millennium Gate museum in Atlantic Station.[5]

By 1952, the plant had 2,100 employees and was producing not only hoops and ties, but also "poultry and field fence, barbed wire, angles, round bars, channels, tees, handrail, reinforcing bars, nails, rivets, welding rods, shackles, [forgings] and fence posts".[3]

The plant's "deep-throated" steam whistle was named "Mr. Tom", after Tom Glenn, an early president of the company.[3]

By 1958, the impact of foreign steel competition pushed smaller steel producers like Atlantic Steel to speak to the United States House Committee on Ways and Means in a request for intervention. Atlantic Steel had only produced 37% of its capacity for steel production in 1958.[6]

In 1979, the Ivaco company of Montreal, Quebec, Canada acquired Atlantic Steel. Operations were partially shut down in the 1980s as competition from home and abroad intensified.

In 1997, of the 1,400 employees in 1979, there were only 400 remaining.

In 1998, Jacoby Development purchased the complex for about 76 million USD,[7] tore down the complex, cleaned up the site and built Atlantic Station in its place.

References

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  1. ^ Kuniansky, Harry Richard (1976). A business history of Atlantic Steel Company, 1901-1968. [New York] : Arno Press. ISBN 978-0-405-08082-1.
  2. ^ Whyte, William Foote; Gilman, Glenn W.; Sweeney, James W. (1954). "Review: Atlantic Steel Company and United Steelworkers of America". Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 7 (4): 630. OCLC 7376606381.
  3. ^ a b c Garrett, Franklin M. (March 1, 2011). Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events, 1880s-1930s. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-3904-7.
  4. ^ Stone, Charles F. (1951). The story of Dixisteel: the first fifty years, 1901-1951, Atlanta Steel Hoop Company, Atlanta Steel Company, Atlantic Steel Company. Atlantic Steel Co. p. 76. OCLC 386036. Mr. Glenn came to our company as president on February 1, 1908, and served in that capacity until March 13, 1922, a fourteen-year period, after which he served as chariman of our board of directors until his death on October 11, 1946, a twenty-four-year period, making a total of thirty-eight years as officer and director.
  5. ^ Marketing, Denim (May 19, 2023). "Spotlight On: Millennium Gate". Atlanta Real Estate Forum. Archived from the original on May 18, 2023. In addition, there are three-period rooms that showcase three distinct chapters in state history. The rooms include an eighteenth-century Colonial study from Midway, Ga., the nineteenth-century office of Thomas K. Glenn when he was president of Atlantic Steel and the twentieth-century drawing room of Pink House, the Rhodes-Robinson home designed by Phillip Shutze.
  6. ^ Tiffany, Paul A. (1988). The Decline of American steel: how management, labor and government went wrong. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 177. ISBN 0195043820. OCLC 15366788. The chairman of the small Atlantic Steel Company, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in 1958, stated, "Unless this trend of imports is sharply turned by Congress, it's only a matter of time before every American producer, regardless of where located, will suffer." Atlantic produced less than 150,000 tons of steel in 1958, only 37% of its rated capacity.
  7. ^ "Atlanta Steel Hoop Company / Atlanta Steel Company / Atlantic Steel Company / Atlantic Station". Artery.org. Archived from the original on March 27, 2006.
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33°47′33″N 84°23′47″W / 33.7925°N 84.3963°W / 33.7925; -84.3963