Across the Monongahela River from U.S. Steel’s massive Carrie Blast Furnaces stands the landmark of U.S. labor history, the Pump House and its adjacent Water Tower. Built in October 1891, the red-brick, slate-roofed Pump House housed an intricate water system that continuously supplied Carnegie Steel's Homestead Works with 7 million gallons of water per day.

In 1892, Homestead’s unionized steelworkers went on strike to demand better wages and working conditions. To quell the strike, mill operator Henry Clay Frick hired Pinkerton soldiers to come to the pump house and break up the strikers. The conflict resulted in 10 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The union’s defeat led to a 40-year hiatus in unionized labor in the steel industry until the formation of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in the late 1930s.