24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Rankin, PA

Rankin is a small borough in Allegheny County on the Monongahela River, about 8 miles southeast of downtown Pittsburgh, wedged between Braddock and Swissvale.

The borough was named after Thomas Rankin, a local landowner and grocery wholesaler, and was incorporated on March 9, 1892 - the same year as the famous Homestead Steel Strike just up the river.

In the early 20th century Rankin specialized in manufacturing steel and wire goods, with employers that included the Braddock Wire Works and the Fort Pitt Tannery.

Rankin is home to the Carrie Furnaces, two towering blast furnaces of the former Homestead Steel Works that were built in 1907, produced up to about 1,250 tons of iron a day at their peak, and were designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006 as a rare surviving example of pre-World War II ironmaking.

Rankin's population swelled from 3,775 in 1900 to nearly 7,500 by 1940 during the steel boom, but has since declined to 1,896 at the 2020 census.

In the 2000 census, Rankin's 2,315 residents lived in 1,002 households, packed into a borough of only about half a square mile.

The Rankin Bridge, officially the George Rankin Jr. Memorial Bridge and built in 1951, carries traffic across the Monongahela River between Rankin and Whitaker.

Hawkins Village, a public housing complex opened by the Allegheny County Housing Authority in 1941 with rents averaging about $14 a month, was among the county's earliest public housing developments.

Rankin drew immigrant communities of Slovak, Polish, English, German, Swedish, Jewish, Irish, and Italian workers during the industrial era, and African American families arrived from the South in search of mill jobs.

The borough celebrated the 130th anniversary of its founding in 2022.