Editing Vandergrift, Pennsylvania (section)

==History==
{{multiple image
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 | header    = Vandergrift, Pennsylvania – before and after
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 | image1    = Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, July, 1895.jpg
 | caption1  = July 1895, before construction of the town
 | image2    = Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, May, 1896.jpg
 | caption2  = May 1896
}}
In the 1890s the Apollo Iron and Steel Company was in a dramatic round of industrial restructuring and labor tension, ending a bitterly contested labor dispute at its [[Apollo, Pennsylvania]], steelworks by hiring replacement workers from the surrounding countryside. To avoid future unrest, the company sought tighter control over its workers, not only at the factory, but also in their homes. Drawing upon a philosophy of reform movements in Europe and the United States, the company's leader, George McMurtry, adopted what was later known as [[welfare capitalism]], with the company going beyond paychecks to provide for the social needs of the workers, and providing a benign physical environment and good housing, to make for happier and more productive workers. Wanting a loyal workforce, McMurtry developed a town agenda that drew upon environmentalism as well as popular attitudes toward capital's treatment of labor.

In 1895, Apollo Iron and Steel built a new, integrated, non-unionized steelworks and hired the nation's preeminent landscape architectural firm, [[Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot]], to design the model industrial town, to be named Vandergrift (for Capt. J.J. Vandergrift, a director of the steel company). The Olmsted firm translated this agenda into an urban design that included a novel combination of social reform, comprehensive infrastructure planning, and private homeownership principles. The rates of homeownership and cordial relationships between the steel company and Vandergrift residents fostered loyalty among McMurtry's skilled workers and led to McMurtry's greatest success. In 1901 he used Vandergrift's worker-residents to break the first major strike against the United States Steel Corporation.<ref>Anne E. Mosher, "'Something Better than the Best': Industrial Restructuring, George McMurtry and the Creation of the Model Industrial Town of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1883-1901," ''Annals of the Association of American Geographers'' 1995 85(1): 84-107.</ref>

[[St. Gertrude Roman Catholic Church]] and the [[Vandergrift Historic District]] are listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]].<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|2009a}}</ref>