Lackawanna (New York)

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Lackawanna
Lackawanna's City Hall.jpg
Location in New York
Lackawanna (New York)
Lackawanna
Lackawanna
Basic data
Foundation : 1909
State : United States
State : new York
County : Erie County
Coordinates : 42 ° 49 ′  N , 78 ° 50 ′  W Coordinates: 42 ° 49 ′  N , 78 ° 50 ′  W
Time zone : Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 )
Residents : 18,141 (as of 2010)
Population density : 1,067.1 inhabitants per km 2
Area : 17 km 2  (approx. 7 mi 2 )
Height : 190 m
Postal code : 14218
Area code : +1 716
FIPS : 36-029-40189
GNIS ID : 0954863
Website : lackawannany.gov

Lackawanna is a city with the status of a City in Erie County in the west of the US state of New York . It has 18,141 inhabitants (as of 2010) on 17 km². Lackawanna is located on the southern edge of Buffalo on the east bank of Lake Erie and belongs to the metropolitan area Niagara Falls-Buffalo. The city got its name after the Lackawanna Steel Company settled there.

history

The area of ​​the city was part of the Buffalo Creek Reservation at the beginning of the 19th century . As part of the expulsion of the Indians , they sold the land in 1842 and settlers began farming in what was then the area of ​​the Town of West Seneca .

From 1900 a plant of the Lackawanna Steel Company was built on the lake shore. The large steel company , named after the Lackawanna River in Pennsylvania , was originally based in Scranton , but decided to move to West Seneca at the end of the 19th century due to rising wage and transport costs. Steel production started there in 1904.

Most of the workers employed in the construction and operation of the steel mill and related facilities moved to Buffalo and West Seneca. The Lackawanna Steel Company also built its own workers' housing estate in the immediate vicinity of the plant. The infrastructure and budget of West Seneca could not keep pace with the influx of thousands of residents, especially since Lackawanna Steel Company paid hardly any property tax due to historically low tax rates . After initially considerable resistance from the plant operator, the western part of the town of West Seneca was split off into its own city, Lackawanna , in 1909 .

The steel mill and related industries dominated the place. In 1922, the Lackawanna Steel Company was taken over by Bethlehem Steel . After employing up to 20,000 people, the plant was largely closed in 1983 after a long decline. Until 2001, coke was still produced and steel products processed. The last part of the factory, which in the meantime came to ArcelorMittal , in which around 260 workers were still employed, was closed in 2009. Parts of the earlier factories, which line the entire shore of Lake Erie in the city, are used by successor companies and wind farms . A conversion is made more difficult by numerous contaminated sites .

religion

Lackawanna is home to 14 Protestant churches, the Masjid Alhuda Mosque as the largest in the Greater Buffalo area and a large number of Roman Catholic churches, the most important being the Basilica of Our Lady of Victory .

sons and daughters of the town

Web links

Commons : Lackawanna, New York  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Mark Goldman: High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York . SUNY Press, 1983, ISBN 978-0-87395-734-2 , pp. 137-141 .
  2. a b David Staba: An Old Steel Mill Retools to Produce Clean Energy. New York Times , May 22, 2007, accessed December 30, 2018 .
  3. James Fink: ArcelorMittal closing Lackawanna plant. American City Business Journals, December 9, 2008, accessed on December 30, 2018 (English): “Steelmaking in Lackawanna has taken another significant blow with ArcelorMittal SA - the world's largest steelmaker - saying Tuesday it will shut its plant there, dropping 260 jobs . The plant, once part of Bethlehem Steel, will be phased out by April 30, 2009 "