Eight buildings, one campus, and a hundred years of American making. This is the ground where the lamps that lit the mines were built, where the modern kitchen was wired, and where hardware bound for the moon was made.
Historians have called the Pittsburgh East End of a century ago the richest neighborhood in the world. George Westinghouse ran an empire from his estate one mile from this campus. Nikola Tesla stayed as his guest. Heinz, Frick and the Mellons kept estates along Penn Avenue.
In the factories along Thomas Boulevard, that genius was put to work. Mine Safety Appliances raised its flagship works here in 1914 and, working with Thomas Edison, built the flameless electric miner's lamp credited with saving ten thousand lives. Next door, Edwin L. Wiegand's Chromalox elements wired the modern kitchen.
The mansions are mostly gone. The ambition never left the ground.
In 1945 Colonel Willard Rockwell made 400 North Lexington Avenue the headquarters of Rockwell Manufacturing, and ran a growing industrial empire from the executive floor that still crowns the building. The aerospace company he chaired, North American Rockwell, built the command and service modules that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon.
The campus touched the program with its own hands too: Chromalox electric heating elements, developed by the Edwin L. Wiegand Company on Thomas Boulevard, flew on the lunar module.
From miner's lamps to the moon in fifty-five years.
When industry moved on, the campus went quiet. In 1996 Westinghouse donated the property for redevelopment, and in 2021 a new chapter began: eight buildings and 24 acres reborn as Rockwell Park.
The reconstruction kept the bones. The sawtooth roof over the Edwin was raised again in new steel, the 1914 smokestack still stands over the plaza, and the red brick was left honest. 3M anchored the first 53,000 square feet, and the district filled with makers again.
George Westinghouse founds his first company in Pittsburgh. His estate rises one mile from this ground, and the East End becomes the richest neighborhood in the world.
Mine Safety Appliances is founded. Its flagship works, today the Rockwell, rises on Thomas Boulevard: heavy timber, steel sash and river brick.
Thomas Edison and MSA develop the flameless electric miner’s lamp, credited with saving ten thousand lives.
The campus grows through the electric age. Daylight factory floors rise, and Edwin L. Wiegand’s heating elements ship worldwide as Chromalox.
The works feed and employ the neighborhood: trade shows, the Streamline Market on the corner, and shifts around the clock.
Hardware built on this campus flies with Apollo 11. The company, led for half a century by Colonel Willard Rockwell, carries American making to the moon.
Rockwell Park: eight buildings and 810,000 square feet restored for the next century of makers.
The next century of this campus is being written by the people who move in. Tell us what you’re making.
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