Connors Steel Company
The Connors Steel Company was a manufacturer of steel hoops, bands and ties for the packing industry as well as structural bars and channels. The company was organized on January 1, 1918 by industry veteran George Connors and took over the Woodlawn Rolling Mill at 50th Street South in Woodlawn, where it employed more than 200 workers. Other incorporators of the firm included W. M. Hoke and S. S. Paul. Connors dismantled the former Connors-Weyman Steel Company works in Helena and moved the usable equipment and materials to the Woodlawn site.
Connors' son, George Connors Jr, took over as chairman in 1927 and as president of the company 10 years later.
In 1950 the plant was acquired by the H. K. Porter Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The former locomotive manufacturer, then owned by Thomas Mellon Evans, had transformed into a holding company for several manufacturing divisions. The Connors Division continued to operate the Birmingham minimill, as well as another factory in Huntingdon, West Virginia which was acquired in 1956.
In 1974 H. K. Porter spun off its Connors Division as a wholly-owned subsidiary. The company experienced severe financial problems beginning in 1979 and shuttered both its plants between 1982 and 1983. The Birmingham plant was sold to the SMI Steel division of the Dallas, Texas-based Commercial Metals Company (CMC) in December 1983. It currently operates as CMC Steel Alabama.
References
- Cruikshank, George H. (1920) History of Birmingham and Its Environs: A Narrative Account of Their Historical Progress, Their People, and Their Principal Interests 2 volumes. Chicago, Illinois: Lewis Publishing Company. - via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections