Some questions get answered faster than you’d expect.
In June, I tried to tell the story of the Westinghouse Atom Smasher; the ninety-ton relic that ruled the Forest Hills skyline for the better part of eighty years, then spent the next decade rotting on its side in a field of rubble.
That story ended with an observation about how we treat our history: we are good at building things, but we are terrible at knowing what to do with them once they stop being useful.
At the time, the Atom Smasher’s fate was still up in the air. Not anymore.
Crews with MBM Construction started tearing it apart in July. Property owner Gary Silversmith confirmed where the pieces are headed: Westinghouse’s nuclear headquarters, forty miles north in Cranberry Township.
“Westinghouse is carefully disassembling it and rebuilding it at their corporate HQ,” he said. A metal lattice had caged the old pear-shaped tank, holding it together long enough to come apart one piece at a time.
Westinghouse says the job should be done by October.
There’s a kind of justice in who’s paying for it. Westinghouse’s nuclear division, the one footing the bill for a nearly century-old teardown, grew directly out of the work this machine did back in 1937.
Communications manager Brian McCrone tied the timing to the company’s own anniversary, saying Westinghouse is “excited to be initiating restoration work” as it marks 140 years since its founding in Pittsburgh.
The company that once smashed atoms in a Pittsburgh suburb is now the one deciding the wreckage was worth saving.
Not everyone in Forest Hills agrees. Some neighbors are glad to see the graffiti-covered hulk hauled off. Others aren’t. Walt Chambers owns the bar across the street and has spent a year watching the tank rust from his front window. He called the demolition “pretty, pretty disheartening.”
Mayor Patricia DeMarco landed somewhere in the middle; glad it’s being saved, sorry it isn’t happening in Forest Hills, where the borough’s own plan to move it a few blocks died the moment the estimate hit $250,000.
The Atom Smasher is leaving Forest Hills. It isn’t leaving for a scrapyard. Eighty years after it went dark, somebody finally decided it was worth the trouble.
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