Otis Steel Company

Otis Steel Company was one of the first major steel companies in Ohio. Located in Cleveland , Otis Steel built the first open-hearth steel furnace in 1875. This company, along with others, helped to make Ohio the second-largest producer of steel in the United States by the last decade of the nineteenth century.

Otis Steel, unlike many steel companies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was able to survive the wave of mergers that drove many small steel companies out of business. All steel companies suffered during the Great Depression. Otis merged with the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company in 1942. The company did well during and after World War II, prospering and continuing to grow. In 1977, Jones & Laughlin merged with Youngstown Sheet & Tube. In the last decades of the twentieth century, Jones & Laughlin, like other Ohio steel manufacturers, faced challenges from the U.S. economy and from foreign competitors.