02 November 2007
Pennsylvania City Reflects Challenges of America’s Rust Belt
New Castle struggles to diversify economy as manufacturing sector shrinks
Washington -- New Castle is the largest city in the Pennsylvania 4th, a congressional district that includes Pittsburgh’s northern suburbs and Beaver and Lawrence counties. New Castle’s history and challenges mirror those of many U.S. cities in the northern Midwest and Mid-Atlantic region known as the Rust Belt.
This area, once known as the Manufacturing Belt, holds the largest concentration of heavy industry in the United States. The region extends from the upper East Coast to eastern Wisconsin, south to the coal-mining regions of West Virginia, and north to the Great Lakes and Canada. As home to the U.S manufacturing sector, this region was the country’s economic engine for decades. But the closing of plants and accompanying loss of jobs renamed the region the Rust Belt, and is forcing New Castle and cities like it to diversify economically or die.
New Castle’s population, drained by shrinking employment opportunities, is half what it was at its 1950s peak. The city is the county seat of Lawrence County, where the median household income in 2000 was $25,598, as compared to a U.S. national median income of $41,994, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Much of New Castle’s population is of European origin. Ancestry claimed by New Castle residents includes Italian (27 percent), German (17 percent), Irish (13 percent), Polish (6 percent) and English (5 percent). Another 12 percent cite roots in other European nations. Approximately 11 percent identify themselves as African Americans, 2 percent as Arab, 1 percent as Lebanese, 1 percent as Syrian and 2 percent as African.
Despite the challenges they face, New Castle citizens remain politically engaged, and sometimes politically annoyed. In a recent poll by a local newspaper, the New Castle News, on the value of campaign signs along streets and roads, 71 percent responded that the signs not only did not influence their votes, but “are an eyesore” and cause voters to “become angry at the candidates.”
The district has a slight Democratic registration edge, an edge too small to be predictive. In the November 2000 election, Lawrence County narrowly supported Al Gore with 20,593 votes as compared to 18,060 votes for Bush. Independent Ralph Nader received 653 votes. In 2004, Bush received 21,542 votes from Lawrence County and John Kerry received 21,131 votes.
On October 24, 2006, a New Castle News editorial offered a very simple statement: “Our Endorsements: We urge you to vote for Democrats -- period.” Whether the paper influenced voters or simply reflected the mood of Pennsylvanians, the state favored Democrats in 2006; in the gubernatorial race, Pennsylvania re-elected incumbent Democrat Ed Rendell over Republican Lynn Swann, with 60 percent of the vote. For Senate, the state elected Democrat Bob Casey over Rick Santorum, with 59 percent. The Pennsylvania 4th sent Representative Jason Altmire, a Democrat, to serve his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
HISTORY
The city’s origins lie in a 1798 survey by civil engineer John Carlysle Stewart of lands granted by the government to Revolutionary War veterans. When he discovered the original survey omitted 20.2 hectares at the confluence of Shenango River and Neshannock Creek, he claimed the land for himself.
Stewart laid out the town of New Castle in April 1798. By the early 1800s, local businesses began to flourish with construction of a canal system through the city. Manufacturing plants were built to take advantage of easy transportation and ready access to raw materials. When the canal system was supplemented and then replaced by rail, factories gained faster transport for more freight on a year-round basis.
New Castle became the county seat of the newly created Lawrence County in 1849; in 1869, with a population of 6,000, New Castle became a city, one of the fastest growing in the United States. By 1900, the city was hailed as the tin plate capital of the world. That industry, along with other factories and mills, supported a rapid population growth -- from 11,600 in 1890 to 38,280 in 1910, as immigrants were drawn by jobs.
As New Castle enjoyed its greatest prosperity in the 1920s, the landscape of the city was transformed by beautiful architecture, including the neoclassical Scottish Rite Cathedral and the Gothic Revival Cathedral Church of St. Mary. The city also expanded its fame, becoming known as both the "hot dog capital of the world" (as home to the chili dog invented by Greek immigrants) and the "fireworks capital of America" (as home to S.Vitale Pyrotechnic Industries Inc. (Pyrotecnico) and Zambelli Internationale.)
Vaudeville was popular in New Castle in the 1920s. The famous actor Bob Hope began his comedy career at the Capitol Theater in New Castle in 1927, when Hope was asked to introduce acts after the master of ceremonies became ill. Hope’s jokes and monologue were so well received that he decided his destiny lay in comedy.
In the 1930s, the Depression hit New Castle hard: businesses closed, and residents lost jobs and homes. The Carnegie Steel Company, which employed thousands in the tin-plating industry, closed in 1931. Although federal programs such as the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps provided some jobs, the city never fully recovered. Wartime -- World Wars I and II and the Korean War -- brought a temporary reprieve as local industry briefly revived. The population peaked at 48,834 in 1950; by 2003, it had dropped to 25,338.
Today, New Castle continues to shift away from its primary reliance on industry to a better-balanced economic base comprising manufacturing, retail and service-related businesses. “Like all cities, over the years the city of New Castle has had its ups and downs,” its mayor, Wayne Alexander, acknowledges, but adds that “great strides have been made in preserving and improving our city.”
Additional information about New Castle is available on the city’s Web site.
