State grant will help stabilize historic New Florence iron furnace

The Ligonier Valley Historical Society plans to use a state grant to help preserve a 19th-century hot-blast iron furnace in New Florence.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Laurel Hill Furnace produced 750 tons of metal during its first year, 1855, and continued in operation for about a decade, according to a description by the National Park Service.

The stone furnace stands 39 feet tall along Baldwin Run and is lined with refractory brick. Private owners donated it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which turned over ownership to the historical society in 1991.

“We’ve been maintaining it ever since,” said Theresa Gay Rohall, executive director of the society. “Almost two years ago, we started noticing some subsidence in one of the corners and we wanted to find an historically accurate way to preserve it.

“It’s one of the best-preserved furnaces of its kind in Pennsylvania, so it’s imperative that we stabilize it. It’s unusual in that it has four sides, rather than the normal three sides you find in our area.”

Matching a $19,265 Keystone Historic Preservation Grant from the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, the society hired Markosky Engineering to complete a study of the furnace and the property it occupies.

“We had ground-penetrating radar to see what was below the surface,” Rohall said. “We found the casting pit, where the hot molten iron came out, and it still had iron in it.”

The historical society now will look to proceed with preservation of the furnace, after raising a match for the additional Keystone Historic Preservation Grant of about $72,000 — among $2.6 million in such funding announced this week for 52 recipients in 24 counties.

Previous work on the furnace has included sealing cracks, capping the structure with a concrete roof and removing plant growth.

A 500-foot tunnel connects the furnace to Baldwin Run, near a stone dam.