Joanna Furnace Complex, Iron furnace historic district in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
The Joanna Furnace Complex is a former iron production facility in Pennsylvania containing buildings from the late 1700s. The site includes the main furnace building, a blowing engine house, and other structures that worked together to make and refine iron.
The works opened in 1792 and closed in 1901 after more than a century of continuous operation. The nameplate honors the wife of one of its founding partners.
The site demonstrates the skills and methods workers used to produce iron during the late 1700s and 1800s. You can see how people organized their labor around the furnace and what daily industrial work looked like in that era.
The site is open to visitors and maintained by a local historical group. You can walk around the grounds to view the buildings and learn about iron production from the structures and their arrangement.
The facility received major technological upgrades in 1889, representing one of the last modernizations of a charcoal-fired furnace in the state. This late investment shows how operators tried to keep their aging works competitive as newer methods emerged elsewhere.
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