Westinghouse Cranberry HQ to receive historic atom smasher
A piece of Western Pennsylvania’s industrial history is coming to Cranberry Township to stay.
A Westinghouse spokesperson said the company plans to disassemble its famed, nearly century-old atom smasher, which has spent a decade lying on its side in the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, and move it to its headquarters in Cranberry Township.
“As we celebrate the 140th anniversary of our founding in Pittsburgh, Westinghouse is excited to be initiating restoration work,” said Brian McCrone, communications manager for Westinghouse.
The atom smasher was originally constructed in 1937 as part of Westinghouse’s research facility in Forest Hills. Known as a Van de Graaff generator, the 36-foot generator was the first of its kind in the entire world and established the Westinghouse Corporation as a major player in the research and development of nuclear energy for nonweapons uses.
“It was a Van de Graaff nuclear particle accelerator of about 5 million volts, which allowed them to explore the behavior of subatomic particles,” said Patricia DeMarco, mayor of Forest Hills. “It was a research facility that they used to understand basic nuclear physics, which was kind of a new discovery at that time.”
“(The atom smasher’s) contributions to many groundbreaking technological advances date back to pre-World War II and helped usher in ‘The American century,’” McCrone said.
Although the atom smasher was decommissioned in 1958, it remained a landmark in Forest Hills for decades. However, Westinghouse eventually shut down the Forest Hills research laboratory and the land surrounding it was sold to Washington, D.C.-based private developer Gary Silversmith in 2013.
According to DeMarco, Silversmith planned to use the old laboratory site to construct apartment buildings, but initially planned to keep the atom smasher intact in some way.
“I know the Woodland Hills High School wanted to get it for a STEM research operation, but the cost was about $4 to $5 million. It was way too prohibitive for a public entity to obtain,” DeMarco said.
One day in January 2015, Forest Hills residents noticed the atom smasher had been knocked off its brick base, where it had stood for nearly 80 years, and was lying on its side. It has remained in a similar position for the past 11 years.
“I think he took down the atom smasher in an attempt to make it more appealing as a purchase property,” DeMarco said. “It has been lying on its side in sad conditions since 2015. ... Once it was removed from the building on which it was assembled, its value as a historic monument preservation site was basically eliminated.”
Silversmith did not respond to a request for comment regarding the atom smasher.
McCrone declined to elaborate on the specifics of when or how the relocation would commence, only saying, “Future plans for the Atom Smasher will be shared in due course.”
Cranberry Township manager Dan Santoro said Monday, Aug. 3, that Westinghouse has yet to inform him of its plans for the atom smasher and he only found out through media reports.
“Westinghouse has not reached out to Cranberry Township to talk with us about the atom smasher,” Santoro said. “They would certainly need some type of approval to locate that structure in Cranberry Township.”
