But the Huletts are now rusting
quietly at the edge of the Cleveland
Bulk Terminal, rendered obsolete by
a new generation of ships equipped
with unloading systems that discharge 10,000 tons of ore an hour.
Less quiet is the debate between the
Huletts' owners and preservationists, who have been wrangling to
save the machines from demolition.
The battle might end on Thursday,
when the Cleveland Landmarks
Commission is to decide whether to
allow the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority to raze three of the
Huletts and dismantle a fourth for
storage, or to grant a second -- and
final -- six-month delay to allow time
for the development of alternative
proposals.
"These are nationally significant
historic monuments," said Carol Poh
Miller, a local historical consultant.
"Given the intimate relationship of
the Huletts to Cleveland's industrial
history, it is unbelievable that we
would sweep them away."
Ms. Miller is a member of the
Committee to Save Cleveland's Huletts, a group of preservationists, urban planners, industrial archeologists, and others. The group has already scored some victories. In 1993,
Cleveland's City Council gave the
Huletts local landmark status. The
unloaders are also listed in the National Register of Historic Places,
have been named a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, and are
semifinalists for the National Trust
for Historic Preservation's list of
America's 11 most endangered historic places, to be announced June 14.
None of those designations, though,
would prevent the port from proceeding with its plans.
The National Park Service has offered to underwrite a study to help
gain National Historic Landmark
status for the machines, and preservationists across the country have
rallied to the Huletts' side.
"We are realists and understand
the position of those in commerce,
but there is only so much historic
material out there," said Robert Vogel, past president of the Society for
Industrial Archeology and curator
emeritus of mechanical and civil engineering at the Smithsonian Institution. "Commerce can spring up anywhere, but there is only one group of
the Huletts left in Cleveland. When
they're gone, they'll be gone forever."
The Huletts were invented by a
Clevelander, George H. Hulett, in
1898, and they revolutionized the handling of iron ore on the Great Lakes.
Before the Hulett, gangs of men
shoveled ore from the holds of ships.
After the Hulett automated this
work, the cost of unloading ore
dropped to 6 cents a ton, from 19
cents. More than 80 of the machines
were built, and most were installed
around the Great Lakes. Cleveland
itself, once the largest iron ore terminal in the world, serving the big
Midwestern steel centers, had 15 Huletts. Today, there are only 6 of these
machines left: Cleveland's 4 and 2
later models in Chicago.
The Port Authority and the Oglebay Norton Company, which operates the Cleveland Bulk Terminal,
say they must remove the Huletts so
they can modernize the dock for
higher volume and a greater diversity of bulk materials. Oglebay Norton
commissioned a study showing that
volume could rise to 6 million tons a
year from the current 1.8 million,
and the company says there is plenty
of demand for this extra capacity.
Port officials say that other area
docks cannot handle this demand.
"Our other deep-water docks are
operating at 130 percent capacity,"
said Gary Failor, the Port Authority's executive director. "It's like we
are packing 10 pounds of potatoes
into a 5-pound sack there."
In the face of the determination of
Oglebay Norton and the port, many
preservationists have despaired of
achieving the original goal of preserving the Huletts in their original
location. Some support a plan for
dismantling one or two and moving
them to a proposed industrial heritage park. The port and Oglebay Norton have offered to dismantle a single Hulett, at an estimated cost of
$500,000, and provide $100,000 more
to hire a professional who will raise
the money needed to rebuild it. However, this offer is contingent upon the
Landmarks Commission's approval
of their demolition plan on Thursday.
Other preservationists will have
none of this, and Ms. Miller is among
them. "History is where you find it,
where it happened, and this is where
the Huletts operated for 80 years,"
she said. "But nobody ever said I
wasn't a purist."
LEVELAND -- It may
seem hard to imagine now, but
Cleveland's four Hulett automatic
ore unloaders used to mount a mesmerizing show on the lake front, west
of downtown. From 1912 until 1992,
these 96-foot behemoths lumbered
along the shore, leaning forward and
sinking their jaws into the bellies of
Great Lakes ships, taking 17-ton
bites of iron ore and spitting them
into nearby rail cars. They looked
like a family of grazing dinosaurs as
they dipped forward, reared back
again, and rumbled their odd, metallic song.
