American Strip Steel

Passaic Avenue in Kearny looks much different than it did at the turn of the century. Factories and machine shops used to tower over both sides of the street. Those industries have since died out and made way for cookie-cutter retail and tacky, high density housing. One such factory that was recently demolished was the American Strip Steel Company. 

American Strip Steel was founded by Newark Entrepenuer LeRoy Schecter. Schecter had just returned home after fighting in World War II. After a brief stint working in the local steel mills he founded his own rolling mill just up river from the city in Kearny.

After a few decades, Schecter noticed that one of the pinch points in his operation was having to rely on outside trucking firms to move his goods around. The mill had a shoreline crane to load barges and was adjascent to a freight railway, but fright was losing out to truck transportation as more and more lines across the country closed and consolidated. This led Schecter to found Norbert Trucking in 1965. 

Kearny experienced the same heavy blows to domestic production that much of the country faced as the decades passed. The Aluminum Bat Factory to the north had been shuttered, as had the Clark Thread Mill to the south. Despite this American Strip was thriving. Things were going so well they began branching out to fill other niches.

In 1989 the company started manufacting metal studs under the name Ware Industries. Ware then purchased the Marino company four years later, rebranding themselves Marino-Ware. 

The Passaic Avenue Industrial corridor was beginning to become a nuicense to the town of Kearny. They declared the strech "an area in need of redevelopment". This allowed them to rezone the area for high density and grant special tax incentives so developers can make a ton of money rebuilding the properties. 

Most of the old industrial buildings were swiftly demolished. American Strip Steel, however, managed to hang on just a bit longer. It wasn't until the 2020's that American Strip had finally left Kearny. They moved to the large Marino-Ware compound in South Plainfield. 

At this point their old buildings stood out a bit like a sore thumb among the equally unappealing "peel and stick" style apartments. The oginal American Strip Steel Buildings were eventually demolished in the early 2020s. Workers moved slowly to salvage some of the overhead gantry cranes that were built into the structure, but by 2023 the buildings were entirely wiped away.

The site is currently being reworked to accomidate the new buildings that will rise where American Strip Steel once stood. Hopefully they pay some sort of homage to what once stood there, as the story is such a quintessentially American one. Only time will tell.