Asbestos Removal · Allegheny County
McKeesport grew around the National Tube Works, opened in 1872 and closed by U.S. Steel in 1987, and its population fell from a 1940 peak of 55,355 to 17,727 at the 2020 census. That leaves the oldest housing of any area here outside Pittsburgh: the median home was built in 1947 and 41% predate 1940.
McKeesport grew around the National Tube Works, which opened in 1872 and was closed by U.S. Steel in 1987, at the point where the Youghiogheny meets the Monongahela. Its population peaked at 55,355 in 1940 and was 17,727 at the 2020 census. The houses built for that larger town are still here: Census estimates put the median home at 1947, with 41 percent of its 9,510 units built before 1940 and 91 percent before 1980. Outside Pittsburgh itself, no area we cover has older housing.
Many McKeesport houses were built with coal-fired boilers or gravity furnaces and later converted to gas. The conversion usually replaced the burner and left the rest: steam or hot-water mains still wrapped in their original insulation, asbestos-cement flue pipe, and boiler jackets skim-coated decades ago. Add several generations of flooring and plaster repairs and a typical house can hold half a dozen materials worth sampling. Damaged pipe lagging in a basement that has flooded or been stripped for scrap is the most urgent of them, because it is friable and sheds when touched.
A city that has lost two-thirds of its peak population has vacant houses, and some of them end up demolished at public expense. The Allegheny County Health Department treats demolitions a municipality carries out as part of a larger project, so the usual exemption for a private house of four or fewer units does not apply. Each house needs a survey by a certified inspector and county notice before it comes down, and where 160 square feet or more of asbestos is found it must be removed under a county permit first. The county has a dedicated $375 permit fee for municipal-funded residential demolitions.
Only about half of McKeesport's homes are owner-occupied, so many of the people asking about asbestos here are landlords. A rental house of four or fewer units owned privately is generally outside Article XXI, but anyone hired to remove asbestos from it must hold Pennsylvania Labor and Industry certification. About 16 percent of units are in buildings of five or more, and those are county facilities. McKeesport is 25 to 30 minutes from downtown by the Mon Valley roads. The common jobs are boiler and pipe insulation and pre-demolition surveys.
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