Gary, Indiana was ABANDONED & Left to ROT

In 1906, U.S. Steel spent $42 million building the largest integrated steel mill in the world on empty sand dunes along Lake Michigan — and a company town to go with it. Within twenty-four years, Gary had a hundred thousand residents, a Broadway lined with department stores and movie palaces, a ten-story hotel, a five-thousand-seat auditorium, and the most talked-about school system in America. This is the story of how a corporation built a city from nothing, what life was like on Broadway during the golden age of American steel, and what happened when the furnaces started going cold. Sources James B. Lane, City of the Century: A History of Gary, Indiana (Indiana University Press, 1978) Stephen G. McShane and Gary S. Wilk, Steel Giants: Historic Images from the Calumet Regional Archives U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, Indiana University Digital Library Program / Calumet Regional Archives Raymond A. Mohl and Neil Betten, Steel City: Urban and Ethnic Patterns in Gary, Indiana, 1906–1950 (Holmes & Meier, 1986) Gary City Center Historic District, National Register of Historic Places documentation Jerry Davich, Lost Gary, Indiana (The History Press, 2015)