The story of Gary, Indiana

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The Story of
Gary, In dian a

AN ILLUS-
TRATED STORY
OF THE
BUILDING OF
THE MOST
MARVELOUS
CITY
ON THE
AMERICAN
CONTINENT

coe'vriciiit

By H. H. Harries

1908

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LIBRARY of CONGRESS

Two Copies Recsived

JAN A6 1909 ,

Oopyrlgnt Entry

dlASS c». XXa No,

O the man who
works, the man
who sweats, the
man who pounds
and rolls the iron, who plows
the fields, and sows the grain
and reaps the golden harvest,
the clerk, the student, the
school teacher, the mechanic,
the laborer, in fact to the
millions of toiling men and
women of the earth, who
hope to rest their weary
bodies in the great afternoon
of life on something better
than blasted hopes and vain
regrets, this book is dedicated.

T WAS NOT many years ago
that Judge Elbert H. Gary, as-
sisted by J. Pierpont Morgan
and others, displayed his won-
derful power as an organizer,
and his marvelous ability as a constructive
genius, in gathering into one great corporation
the vast interests of nearly seven-eighths of the
great Iron and Steel Industries of America.

From the organization of the Federal Steel
Company, with its four hundred millions of
capital, to the birth of the United States Steel
Corporation, with a capitalization of one billion
four hundred million of dollars, figures that in
each instance fairly astounded the financial
centers of the civilized world, was but a span
of a few years.

The marvelous success of this vast enterprise
is best told by their yearly financial statement,
showing the enormous profits of more than one
hundred and fifty million dollars in the year 1907.
Back of Judge Gary, who is now chairman
of the Board of Directors, and the practical speak-
ing head of this, the greatest Industrial Combine
in the history of the world, stand the financial
giants of the moneyed world. Men whose open
word can command millions of money, and whose

integrity is as firmly established throughout the
civilized world as is the stability of Pikes Peak,
that raises its lofty head in the center of the
Rocky Mountains, and frowns or smiles at will
on the valleys that stretch away hundreds of
miles from its base.

With the brains and money and integrity of
such men as Morgan, who is said to be the
greatest concentrator of capital and physical
energy in the world, back of him, and after a
period of years of marvelous prosperity. Judge
Gary conceived the idea of a great Central City
where the vast industries of the Iron and Steel
interests of the entire continent could center and
concentrate their energies. The outcome of
this dream of the great Chairman of the Cap-
tains of Industry and Finance is the creation
of Gary.

In its location at the head of Lake Michigan,
twenty-six miles from State and Madison streets,
Chicago, is again displayed that wisdom and
foresight that characterizes the management of
this great Industrial Combine, ruled by men who
think in billions, and who are building this great
new city of Gary.

NEv^» CiTY HAtW GARY WO.

The new City Hall as it will appear when completed at the corner of
Seventh Avenue and Massachusetts Street.

OWHERE in the United States, and probably
nowhere in the world, can be found a duplicate
of the town and factory site of Gary. Its size,
its natural advantages, its nearness to the great
ore beds of Upper Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota, and the vast coal deposits of Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia ; its wonderful transportation facili-
ties, both by water and rail ; its opportunity for a great inland harbor,
with room for twenty miles of splendid dockage ; the healthfulness
of its location, and its proximity to a great central labor market and
the greatest railroad center in the world — all these were considered
in the selection of Gary for a great city.

THE building of a city where forty to sixty-five thousand men
will be employed, means a wonderful advance in values ot all
nearby property. It means a city of at least a quarter of a million
people ; it means business openings for all the diiferent lines of trade
and merchandising, in order to care for the wants of such an in-

Site of the United States Steel Company's general offices at Gary
April i8, igo6.

dustrial community ; it means opportunities for the man with small
capital to acquire cheap properties, and so start in business in his
chosen line, and grow with the community.

YOUNG MEN looking for locations often think that the new
towns of the western country are the only places where their
limited capital can be successfully employed. They overlook the
fact that such towns have little if any pay roll, or industries, to
support them, while industries like the ones at Gary will have a
larger disbursement of cash everv week than one thousand good
country towns of the west combined.

OPPORTUNITIES like these offered now in this Great New
Industrial Center building within one hour^s ride of the
down-town district of Chicago should not be overlooked by the man
or woman who wishes to lay the foundation for a life competency,
who would insure comfort and peace and restful quiet in their
declining years. Such opportunities will never come again in the
life-time of those now living.

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United States Steel Company's general offices at Gary, showing also

the beautiful and artistic cement bridge over the

Grand Calumet River. April, 1908.

ON the pages herein will be found an illustrated story of the build-
ing of the most marvelous city on the American continent.
Not in the history of the industrial development of the world can be
found a parallel to the building of Gary. The United States is famous
throughout the world for its vast enterprises and its wonderful achieve-
ments ; the industry of its people, their initiative genius, their pluck
and push and untiring energy, together with the marvelous resources
of the country, are topics of conversation and of wonder and admira-
tion throughout the
whole world. But
never before in the
history of the material
development of the
American continent,
or its people, has an
industrial enterprise
of such gigantic pro-
portions been con- ^.111. entrance to the great mills

Going to work.

The corner of Broadway and Fifth Avunuc as it appeared
April i8, igo6.

ceived and put into execution, and carried out, as the marvelous
enterprise now building at Gary, Indiana.

THE pictures here shown represent, in a feeble way only, the
progress and development of barely eighteen months of labor.
The great mills now nearing completion will be the largest Iron and
Steel Manufacturing Plant ever built by the hands of men. Nearly
seven thousand acres will be required on which to build this monster
industrial plant, and furnish locations for the great allied industries
which will have their main central plants at Gary. The initial in-
vestment in the land alone for this great enterprise is the largest in the
history of industrial development in the world.

THIS all new town of Gary presents the most wonderful record
of growth and development, in the shortest period, of any
town or city in the civilized world; it is without a parallel in any
country on the face of the earth. Unique in itself, because of the
fact that, destined as it is to be one of the world's greatest centers of
industry and activity, and having already expended over fifty millions

Broadway and Fifth Avenue, looking south, as it appeared July 24, 1908.

of dollars in constructing the most gigantic manufacturing plant in the
history of civilization, it is withal just beginning to build. Those who
read this and doubt its truth should come here and verify its every word.

THE possibilities for profitable investment in Real Estate in a city
like Gary are so great that they cannot be described or fully
explained in a conservative article of this kind. The reader is asked
to bear in mind that this place, that two years ago was a wilderness
without a habitation, is to be the Capital Center of an industry that more
clearly and truthfully
indicates the progress
and development, the
prosperity and wealth
of every civilized
country on the face
of the earth, than any
other industry known
to man — The Iron

and Steel Industry.

Gary State Bank, Capital $100,000
S. W. Corner Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

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Fifth Avenue, looking east from Washington Street, October i, 1908.

THE first of the series of great mills, covering close on to one
thousand acres of ground, is now nearing completion, and is the
crowning masterpiece of the skill, the observation, the experience and
training, of the master minds of the Iron and Steel world for the past
one hundred years. In addition to this great plant, which of itself
would be sufficient to build a city of one hundred and fifty thousand
people, there will be located here the main central plant of each of the
great subsidiary companies controlled by the United States Steel
Corporation, namely:

The American Bridge Company,

The American Tin Plate Company,

The American Steel and Wire Company,

Also the great Independent Plant of The American Car and
Foundry Company, that is now building an enormous plant
that will use eight to twelve thousand men it its operation,

and others now negotiating for locations. Six thousand acres are re-
served for these great plants, any one of which alone is large enough
to build a city greater than the largest city in the State of Indiana.

Broadway and Sixth Avenue, as it appeared two years ago in July, 1906.

WE have given herein a brief outline of the great industries build-
ing in Gary, that you may better understand the wonderful
opportunities in a community where wisely selected Real Estate will
advance by leaps and bounds in months instead of years. The value
of Real Estate increases hand in hand with the growth of population,
and there is no place in America today that is growing in population as
fast as Gary, Indiana. The wise investor of today will be the rich
man of tomorrow. We are on the ground ; we know whereof we
speak ; we were here nine months before the great Steel Corporation
put a single deed on
record. We have
seen it grow inch
by inch and step
by step. Two years
ago the population
of Gary consisted of
barely enough people
to organize the town

government, a per- Security Building, April. 1908

N. E. Corner Broadway and Sixth Avenue

OPENING ot the great harbor at Gary, Indiana, July 23, 1908. The ;
members of the Gary Commercial Club and Hon. John W. Kern, demo
in the commercial, civil and political life of the state of Indiana, being warped to
visitors. Superintendent Gleason, whose master mind is responsible for the con
action the great unloaders and conveyors shown in the foreground on the left c

THE AREA EMBRACED IN THIS PANORAM

mer, Elbert H. Gary, with twelve thousand tons of iron ore, having on board the
ic candidate for Vice President, and many other distinguished gentlemen prominent
■ dock, amid the enthusiastic shouts and plaudits of many thousands of residents and
ction of this, the world's greatest steel mill, was there to give the order that put in
le picture and spanning the largest and finest ore bins of solid cement in the world.

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/lEW IS NEARLY ONE THOUSAND ACRES

Broadway and Sixth Avenue as it appears today, November i, 1908.
Looking south, Gary Hotel on the right.

feet wilderness of hills and ponds, today an active city of fifteen
thousand people with miles of the finest streets to be found in the
State of Indiana. Hotels costing upward of one hundred thousand
dollars. Stores and office buildings that would do credit to a city twenty-
five years old. Street car lines paying, it is said, fifty dollars per car a
day profit. A water tunnel two miles under Lake Michigan, electric
lights and gas, and a school now building at a cost of one hundred and
ninety-four thousand dollars; the finest harbor on the Great Lakes, that
will have more tonnage when the industries are completed than the

harbors of Chicago
and South Chicago
combined multiplied
by two, and the great-
est Iron and Steel
Mills in the world,
built by the largest,
richest and most pros-
perous Industrial
Gary Hotel Combination in this

N. W. Corner Broadway and Sixth Avenue

The down-town district of Chicago as it appeared in 1833.

or any other country. Gary is connected with the outside world by
thirty-two great lines of railroad and twenty-eight steamboat lines, and
will trade with every civilized country on the globe.

THE great city of Chicago, twenty-six miles away, with its ninety-
six square miles of territory, its four thousand two hundred miles
of streets, fifteen hundred miles of sewers and forty-eight miles of
boulevards, is barely seventy-five years old. The founders of Chicago
did not have in mind the building of a great city ; what they accom-
plished was only incidental to the ordinary pursuit of the varied activities
of life, but their efforts have resulted in the greatest material develop-
ment the human race ever has witnessed, in a similar length of time.
In the down town district, a spot a mile square, can be pointed out
where much more business is done than in any similar space in the
world. The early settlers of Chicago had but little encouragement to
believe that a great city would ever grow out of the swampy morass in
which the townsite was laid ; the country round about was a wilder-
ness almost unknown ; their neighbors were Indians, not always
friendly ; but the geographical location for a great distributing center

As the corner of Broadway and Seventh Avenue appeared April i8, 15-..

was there, and the people came, and step by step the Indians were
driven westward into the wilderness towards the setting sun, the song
of the axe and the music of the saw became the accompaniment to the
mother's song as she sang in the twilight the lullabies of childhood.

IT required seventeen years, or from 1833 to 1850, for Chicago to
grow into a population of twenty-nine thousand. It took Gary two
years, or from 1906 to 1908, to grow into a population of fifteen
thousand. The next ten years of Chicago's history, or from 1850 to
i860, its population grew to be one hundred and nine thousand.
What will Gary do in the next ten years, where sixty-five thousand
men will be employed, every working day, where the fires never go
out, and where the nights will be illuminated for miles about by the
great furnace fires of the world's greatest industry?

READER, do you want an interest in this great manufacturing
center 7iozv, when you can get it at a mere fraction of what it
will be worth in three to five vears from now? or are you willing to

Broadway and Seventh Avenue, looking north.
November i, 1908.

watch this great Pitts-
burg of the west grow
into a population oi
two hundred and fifty
thousand people with-
out profiting by the
development and in-
crease in values that
always have and al-
ways will follow the
investment of enormous capital in industrial enterprises of this kind,
and refer to it five years from now as the opportunity you cast aside ?

THIS is an age of large things. Fifty years ago the combined
manufacturing interests of this continent could not have built a
place like Gary ; but this is a day of quick action ; it is a rapid age ;
it is the day of the trained man whose hands are wired to his brain;
it is the age of combination of capital and men. The great fortunes
are made now by the men who, seeing the opportunities, know enough
to grasp them. The opportunity oi your life is knocking at your door.
Will you receive it or reject it?

THE great development of the next twenty-five years will be in
the Middle West, and west of the Missouri River and east of the
Rocky Mountains,
because the resources
of that great region
are unlimited and the
climatic conditions are
conducive to develop-
ment. Study the map
of the United States
and the development
taking place today.

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First National Bank, Capital $100,000
And First Trust and Savings Company
Broadway, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

The Victoria Hotel, south east corner of Broadway and
Seventh Avenue. 1908.

and the great projects planned for the future, and you will find the
reason why the Greatest Combination of Capital and Physical
Energy in the world is coming west and building the largest Industrial
and Manufacturing Enterprise in America at Gary.

THE future of Gary is thus assured. Its wealth is not problem-
atical or hidden in unknown mines of gold or silver or copper,
but is securely stored in banks and other treasure houses of the country,
from which to be drawn as needed. It is not a city of vague expec-
tations, but is as solid and substantial as the names of Carnegie, Mor-
gan, United States Steel Corporation, and hundreds of independent en-
terprises with their thousands of millions of dollars can make it.

FROM Minnesota and Superior ore fields this great Company will
bring by water in its own boats the crude ore from its own great
mines to its own docks, some of which are now completed in the very
waters of Lake Michigan at Gary. At the great mills this ore will be
turned into steel and reloaded again into its own boats for distribution
down the great inland waterways, and down the Mississippi River to

St, Louis, Memphis,
New Orleans and all
the Gulf ports and so
on through the Pan-
ama Canal to the
great Pacific and the
far-off ports of China
and lapan and the Far
East. In the other
direction the Steel
Company's boats will ply the Great Lakes and canals, and the Hudson
River to New York, there to be sent in all directions by canals, rivers
and ocean, to all points on the Atlantic coast, and there also to be re-
loaded in ocean-going steamers to Europe and the Continent of the
Old World.

JefTerson Public School
Sixth Avenue and Jefferson Street.

IT is estimated that ten million tons of ore annually will be diverted
from Pittsburg to Gary, at an annual saving of more than one
mil'ion dollars in carrying charges, and the savings on the haul or
finished steel and iron from Pittsburg back west will double, triple and
multiply the million dollars saved in ore freights.

THE mills at Gary will not only be the largest in the world, but
they will be the most modern, and consequently the most
economical to ope-
rate. All of the im-
proved methods and
modern improve-
ments that have been
added piecemeal to
the plants at Pittsburg
and other American
cities, and at the

raniOUS ivrupp works One of the great main sewers, showing the size

and character of the public improve-
ments being installed.

Broadway, looking north from Eighth Street.

at Essen, Germany, will be built from the ground up at Gary, so in
times of depression or panics the mills at Gary will continue in opera-
tion when less modern plants that are expensive to operate will be
forced to close down.

JAMES J, HILL, the great empire builder of the Great Northern
Railroad, in a recent letter to Governor Johnson, of Minnesota,
declared "that the building of fifteen thousand miles of additional rail-
road trackage every year for the next five years, at an annual cost ot
over one thousand one hundred million of dollars, was absolutely
necessary." At one hundred and forty tons to the mile it would re-
quire two million tons of steel rails
every year to furnish the fifteen
thousand miles of track required.
This is nearly two-thirds of the
product of all the rolling mills in
the United States. The task of
supplying this immense amount of
new steel will devolve upon the
great Economical Plant at Gary.

The residence section of Gary
in April, igo6.

The Emerson School Building now being erected at a cost of $194,000

THE plants at Gary will consist of eighteen Blast Furnaces,
eighty-four Open Hearth Furnaces, six Rolling Mills, besides
many hundreds of acres of shops and departments for special work.
The Gary Steel Mills will require ten million tons of ore annually and
will put out from four million to five million tons of finished steel,
more than one million tons of which will be rails.

IN view of the foregoing facts, can you or do you doubt the future
of Gary ? Do you think of the United States Steel Corporation
as an ordinary Steel Company with one or two mills? If so, let me
tell you something of its magnitude, something of its wonderful re-
sources, and its far-reaching fields
of activities.

THE United States Steel Cor-
poration owns as much land
as is comprised in the three states
of Massachusetts, Vermont and
Rhode Island. It employs One

Residence section of Gary in April,
IQ08. Van Buren Street.

Residence section of Gary in April, ic
Jackson Street, looking north.

Hundred and Eighty Thousand
workmen. More than one million
persons (which equals the popula-
tion of Nebraska and Connecticut ) ,
i depend upon it for their living. It
paid out in wages last year One
Hundred and Twenty-eight Mil-
lion Dollars, which is more than
the United States Government paid for her army and navy.

It owns railroad tracks which would extend from New York to
Galveston, Texas.

It owns Thirty Thousand Cars and Seven Hundred Locomotives.
It has Ninety-three Blast Furnaces which run night and day, and
Fifty Great Iron Mines with ore enough to last one hundred years.
It makes more Steel than Great Britain and Germany.
It burns Ten Million Tons of Coal a year. Eleven Million Tons
of Coke, and Fifteen Billion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas.
Its supply of fuel would last sixty years.

It paid Four Hundred Million Dollars for the Great Ore Beds on
the shores of Lake Superior.

This is the Great Industrial Corporation that is building the
MARVELOUS CITY OF GARY, and is responsible for its future.

D

O NOT FORGET that Gary will grow more in five years
than the average good manu-

facturing town grows in fifty years,
and that there will be more peo-
ple in and around Gary in ten
years than in the largest city in
the State of Indiana that has been
growing and prospering for the
past fifty years.

The E. H. Gary, first steamer to
enter the new harbor.

From THE ECONOMIST Financial
Editorial, December 5, 1908.

' I ^HE drift and the opinion of the Captains
■*■ ot Industry as to the future may he in-
ferred from the developments at Gary and the
plans that have been adopted to be worked out
later on. Enough has been said in regard to this
new field of the United States Steel Corporation
to indicate in a way the magnitude of ihe under-
taking, but Chicago does not yet appreciate what
is happening close to its doors, and still less does
the rest of the world grasp the magnitude of the
project. It sounds like exaggeration to say that
engagements already entered into contemplate the
employment of 75,000 men, and that a popula-
tion there of 250,000 in the near future is a con-
servative estimate, but when such information
comes from cautious men, familiar with what is
going on, one must accept the statements with
tolerance at least.

]AN 16 1909

A PROPHESY

ENGINEER OFFICE, U. S. ARMY
508 Federal Building

Chicago, July 27, 1908.

Mr. H. S. Norton,

President Gary Commercial Club, Gary, Ind.

Dear Sir:

I desire to thank you specially for your in-
vitation of last week to the <' Opening of Gary
Harbor," and for the pleasure which it gave me
to accept and be present.

The possibilities of Gary are enormous ; it
starts today with the advantages which Chicago
acquired only after many years of hard struggles.
If properly handled, Gary and its adjoining
towns may in i 5 to 20 years rival, if not surpass,
Chicago as a commercial and manufacturing
community. May it successfully arrive at that
position. y^^y ^^^ly^

W. H. BIXBY,

Colonel Engineers, U. S. Army.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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COMPLIMENTS OF

^the H.II. Harries Company

Real Estate — Investments
Mortgage Bankers

Security Building, Broadway and Sixth Ave.
Telephone 236

GARY, INDIANA