Rastin Observation Tower shoots up into space like an alien monolith amidst a neighborhood of rickety houses in Mount Vernon, Ohio. A metal, spiral staircase twists around the out-of-use smokestack; from the top, you can peer down at the rest of Ariel Foundation Park. It’s a lush, green expanse dotted with factory ruins that levels rise up to form grassy, ziggurat-like terraces where children play on warm days. A “river” made from glass left behind during the site’s manufacturing days cuts through the earth on one side of the park, frozen in time. The park is an homage to Pittsburgh Plate Glass, whose company once dominated the small city. Like communities all over the Rust Belt, glass has a long, rich history in Mount Vernon.
Glass can be easy to overlook, but its influences are everywhere. Glass manufacturing came to western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and the northern panhandle of West Virginia in the late 1800s, when companies were taking advantage of the region’s wealth of fuel sources. It shaped towns and cities, employing thousands and spurring economic development. In the century and a half since, glass has served as both an industrial material and an artistic medium. Today, Rust Belt artists are reimagining glass’s potential uses.
Clear foundations
Glassmaking was technically colonial America’s first industry, with a rudimentary glass shop opening in Jamestown in 1608. The workshop didn’t last more than two years, and a second attempt in 1622 was also a failure. Glass production finally became profitable in the early 1800s, when several companies emerged in New England. From 1820-1860, the glass industry grew fivefold. It even became one of the United States’ biggest employers until the beginning the 20th century, according to Barbara Floyd, retired director of special collections at the University of Toledo and author of the book The Glass City: Toledo and The Industry That Built It. Due to the extensive menial labor it required, however, many of the workers were children. A typical workshop in the late 1800s included a skilled glassblower (who usually made two to three times more than other industrial workers at the time) and four young employees referred to as “boys.” In glass bottle production, the “mold boy” fitted a cast around the molten glass before the skilled worker blew into a blowpipe to shape the viscous material. Another boy then cracked the finished piece off the blowpipe before handing it to a third boy to put in the annealing lehr, a chamber for glass to cool.