(upbeat music) - [Narrator] What is this strange looking place in the middle of Birmingham?

Is it a rusty old alien spaceship?

At Halloween, you might know it as a haunted house, but it is so much more than that.

It's called Sloss Furnaces.

What happens at Sloss Furnaces?

Many things have been created here by many different people.

It created the Magic City and built modern Birmingham, Alabama.

Birmingham blossomed overnight, almost out of thin air.

Before Sloss Furnace was built, Birmingham was a small town.

That was until James Withers Sloss had an idea about changing iron ore into cold hard cash, which turned Birmingham into the Magic City.

America was growing in the late 1800s and needed to create steel to build factories and skyscrapers.

We built a lot of skyscrapers.

Every city in the country wanted one.

New York City built the Empire State Building.

That took a lot of steel, which was a problem, because it took a lot of iron ore and coal to make steel.

The Red Mountain near Birmingham was full of iron ore, and since there were coal mines nearby, James Withers Sloss thought it made perfect sense to build a furnace near the mountain, and Sloss Furnace became so successful that everyone in the country wanted steel from Birmingham.

People from all over the state wanted to work at Sloss because it offered better opportunities.

Making steel is hot work.

Iron ore and coal need to be heated to about 3000 degrees, so they can be melted together to make iron.

That is hot, really hot, so hot that workers were constantly overcome by the heat.

Their bosses would always tell them to eat salt pills.

Salt was the closest thing to sports drinks back then, and you would need to keep your strength up to turn one of the world's largest wrenches, which was used to help create iron at Sloss.

It weighed as much as the Liberty Bell, a baby whale or a Volkswagen Beetle.

Before iron ore became the great and mighty steel, it was baby iron, called pig iron.

Why was it called pig iron?

Because it was so cute.

- [Audience] Aw.

- [Narrator] These baby pig-sized pieces of iron were easy to ship to factories in Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Louisville, where they were turned into steel for skyscrapers.

Hundreds of tons of iron were produced at Sloss every day.

This took teamwork, day in and day out, with African-American and white workers working together, somewhat unique at the time, because Sloss, like Birmingham, was segregated.

70% of the workers at Sloss were African-American.

They had the hardest jobs but got paid less than white workers.

In spite of that, when iron was being made, African-American and white workers needed to work side by side to get the job done.

Although Sloss was successful, in part due to teamwork, eventually America did not need pig iron, and as the furnaces smoke stacks were putting out a lot of pollution into the air, it was decided to close down Sloss.

Eventually it would become overgrown with weeds and trees, until a new community would find a home at Sloss, creating wonderful and crazy things.

Sloss makes art.

Artists like to make things from all kinds of stuff, including iron, which is kind of difficult, because you can't just cut it with scissors and glue it together.

They needed to learn how the original workers at Sloss created iron.

Once artists figured out they can make super-hot molten iron at Sloss Furnaces, artists from all over the country started to come to Birmingham to make art at Sloss.

Once again, Sloss Furnace was the place to be.

It takes many artists to work in the heat and create this iron.

Sloss looks different to today's artists than it did to the original workers, who saw it as a factory.

Artists might see it as an old alien spaceship or a metal maze.

It is a fun place that inspires them to create interesting artworks.

They liked Sloss so much that they worked really hard to make sure that people don't ever forget how to make iron.

Sloss Furnaces almost didn't survive long enough for artists to take it over.

Some people wanted to knock it down.

After Sloss closed but before the artists found it, the furnaces had become rusty and overgrown with weeds.

Doesn't it make sense to tear it down and build something new, like a skate park or roller coaster or mini golf?

Sloss creates pride.

People in Birmingham, including kids, found out that they enjoyed walking and climbing around the old Sloss Furnaces.

It made them happy.

Other people remembered when their parents or grandparents were workers there and realized they love Sloss.

(upbeat music) Many people in Birmingham got together and decided they wanted to save Sloss.

The people of the city all took a vote on whether to save it or knock it down.

They voted to save it as a national historical landmark.

To them, it would always be a part of Birmingham.

It created, in all of these people, a sense of pride that Sloss had made Birmingham world famous for creating iron.

Today, if you look around, you will see iron everywhere in Alabama.

Sloss Furnaces is even a part of the big football game around Thanksgiving, known as the Iron Bowl.

(audience cheering)