Smog museum a ‘great hidden resource’
Scott Beveridge/O-R Brian Charleton, archivist at Donora Smog Museum, examines one of thousands of glass negatives that were produced by U.S. Steel photographer Bruce Driesbach and are now in the Donora Historical Society collection.
Courtesy of Donora Historical Society
Donora photographer Bruce Driesbach and his wife, Lulu, in their apartment in Donora in the early 1900s.
Courtesy of Donora Historical Society An image Bruce Driesbach captured in the U.S. Steel Zinc Works in Donora
Courtesy of Donora Historical Society As a quality control and safety inspector at a U.S. Steel mill in Donora, it’s believed Bruce Driesbach staged this photograph for a safety campaign.
DONORA – The Donora Smog Museum isn’t just a place to learn about America’s worst air pollution disaster involving steel mill pollutants that claimed more than 20 lives in 1948.
The museum operated by the Donora Historical Society is also overflowing with memorabilia, some of which is associated with hometown natives and professional baseball players Stan Musial and the father and son who share the Ken Griffey name.
“This is a great hidden resource place,” said museum archivist Brian Charleton while discussing the collection of thousands of glass negatives that were created by a photographer who worked in the U.S. Steel mill here.
Bruce Dreisbach, who was a quality control and safety inspector at the mill, documented nearly everything that happened at the mill and other newsworthy events in Donora between 1906 and 1959, when he died of a heart attack at age 77.
Many of the nearly 4,000 Dreisbach negatives came into the possession of the historical society after his wife, Lulu Miller, died in 1986 at the age of 102. The negatives had been stored in her apartment in the Mellon Bank Building at McKean Avenue and Fifth Street. Other Dreisbach negatives were discovered at an estate sale in Virginia and given to the society.
But most of the photographer’s life story remains a mystery to the museum, Charleton said.
“We really don’t know much about him,” Charleton said.
The visual record of the steel mill was rare enough to attract the attention of the Smithsonian, which arranged after Lulu Miller Dreisbach died to have a fraction of new prints created from the negatives for its archives and the society.
Charleton said he has a priority list of other prints the museum wants to have created from the negatives as money becomes available.
Dreisbach was a founding member of the historical society, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, and Charleton said he hopes to learn more about the photographer as he researches the society for its birthday.
Donora become forever associated with the smog of October 1948 that became the impetus for the country’s first clean air laws.
The smog remains a popular event in history resulting in the museum at 595 McKean Ave., having drawn visitors from as far as Europe, South Korea and China, Charleton said.
The museum’s hours of operation have become limited after a grant expired that allowed it to hire a staff person to keep the museum open during the week.
It’s now open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and by appointment.
For information, call 724-823-0364.