The last time I put up a picture of the name of a steel company rolled into a piece of steel, I said it was advertising. Here’s another example, from the BMT station at Cortlandt Street, and I’m rethinking that explanation. This station as opened in 1918 as part of the Dual Contracts subway expansion that created the Lexington, Seventh Avenue, Broadway, and Nassau/Broad lines in Manhattan as they exist today.
The first reason is that it’s spectacularly inefficient advertising. The letters had to be imprinted on a roller, so that every piece of steel of that size coming out of the mill would have the same name on it in raised lettering. But the vast majority of those pieces of steel were either invisible once installed (as in a steel-frame building, where they’d be covered by fireproofing) or placed so that no one was ever going to see the name (as in the chords of a truss bridge). The two examples I’ve shown are in the subways, which is one of the few places that people come face to face with bare steel. And of the people who happen to see the name, how many are in a position to specify steel use? How many of those will base their decision, to any degree, on seeing the name on steel in service?
The second reason… No matter how long I stare at that photo, I don’t see it as anything but “CSC USA”. That’s the Carnegie Steel Company, which was the largest steel manufacturer in the country, so there’s no big surprise there. The thing is, in 1901, the CSC was sold to the new behemoth US Steel Corporation, and while the name continued in use for some time after, it was no longer an independent company. It seems odd that US Steel would be advertising one component company in that manner, although I guess anything’s possible.
So, not advertising. Or not advertising in a form I understand it.
