"Tube Town" - Mahoningtown PA

In January 1896 the New Castle Tube Mill, making seamless steel tubes for bicycles and other products, opened in a rural area along the north side of Mahoning Avenue. The City of New Castle PA was expanding in that direction, but Mahoningtown was still a separate borough (until annexed to become the Seventh Ward in January 1898). Throughout 1896 a small community sprung along Mahoning Avenue as boarding houses and residences were built for employees. The community soon expanded to the hillside area along Liberty Street and Ashland Avenue. Residents began calling the area Tube Town and lobbied for resources from the city. The Lawrence School, opened for local children in 1901, was sometimes referred to as the Tube Town School. It wasn’t long before additional plants opened nearby and made Mahoning Avenue/Industrial Street/Cedar Avenue a thriving industrial district by the turn of the century. The most notable facility was the Shenango Sheet & Tin Plate Company (“Shenango Works”), which opened in 1898 and eventually became the largest tin plate plant in the United States. The Tube Mill was bought out by the Shelby Seamless Tube Company in 1899 and dismantled. The massive Shenango Works is what really made the area grow, but the name Tube Town originates with the short-lived New Castle Tube Mill.