Patch housing along New Salem Road at Buffington, Pennsylvania, a patch/mine/coke yard built by the Illinois Steel Company in 1900. Eventually it was taken over by, surprise surprise, Frick.
Frick Coke closed the Buffington mine in the 1920s, but it was reopended during World War 2. This is how the Buffington safety board looked during the height of the war. Soon after this the Buffington mine was exhuasted and permanently closed in 1946. (Courtesy Coal and Coke Heritage Center, Penn State Fayette)
Every large coal mine maintained a machine shop. Here is a rare glimpse of the machine shop at Buffington during the 1940s. (Courtesy Coal and Coke Heritage Center, Penn State Fayette)
Part of the big Buffington patch as viewed from the adjacent town of New Salem. Most of the houses built by the company are still there.
A sad photograph: Several coke ovens like this at Buffington that have doors built on to them. They may have served as residential shelters for the homeless
during the Depression.
Most of the other coke oven ruins at Buffington, such as these, are typical of coke oven ruins found throught Western Pennsylvania.
Still extant shop buildings were once part of the Buffington coal and coke complex.
The extant company store on New Salem Road.
Jack writes, "In your photographs of the Buffington coke ovens, you mentioned doors on some of the ovens, suggesting that they may have dated from the depression. I lived as a child in New Boro, directly on the other side of Buffington from New Salem, and went to grade school in New Salem in the late forties and early fifties. We would often walk home from school along the railroad tracks in front of the slate dumps with the ovens behind. We'd also often walk through the oven area, although my mother forbid it because of the 'bums' living there. Several were occupied then by bums (period terminology for today's homeless), and one was even reputed to be occupied by a woman and man living together (horrible scandal at the time). So, I can't verify or argue that they may have been occupied during the depression, but I can testify that some were occupied circa 1950."