Downfall
Cornwall Iron Furnace became obsolete by the 1880s. The Bessemer and open-hearth processes of creating steel, the replacement of charcoal with coke and anthracite coal, the discovery of iron deposits at the Iron Range in Minnesota near Lake Superior, and the building of modern factories in Pittsburgh, Steelton and Bethlehem brought about the end of iron production in Cornwall. Cornwall Furnace no longer earned a profit in its last ten years of operation and the last owner, Robert Habersham Coleman, had it shut down on February 11, 1883. In 1932, the furnace and ancillary buildings were deeded by Margaret Coleman Buckingham and have since been restored and open to the public.
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Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)