In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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@ Right: Tasty Baking Company’s former home on Hunting Park Avenue in Nicetown. The company occupied this site from 1922 until moving to the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 2010. PHOTO BY SMALLBONES, 2011, WIKIPEDIA COMMONS. Below and bottom: Aerial views of two of Philadelphia’s major manufacturers in the early twenty-first century—Aker Philadelphia Shipyard and AgustaWestland helicopter. Located at opposite ends of the city, Aker in South Philadelphia and AgustaWestland in the Northeast (adjacent to Northeast Philadelphia Airport), represent Philadelphia’s longtime strength in transportation manufacturing. IMAGES COURTESY OF AKER PHILADELPHIA SHIPYARD AND AGUSTAWESTLAND PHILADELPHIA CORPORATION. MANUFACTURING IN EARLY TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY PHILADELPHIA Philadelphia’s economy in the early twentyfirst century is much more service-based than industrial. Its major employers are in education and healthcare (“Eds and Meds”), professional services such as law and insurance, and hospitality. But if Philadelphia no longer has industrial giants on the order of Baldwin Locomotive or Cramp Shipyard, it does have longtime local manufacturers making signature products. In food processing, Dietz & Watson and Amoroso are among the bestknown makers, respectively, of the lunch meats and rolls for Philly’s ever popular hoagie and cheese steak sandwiches. The Tasty Baking Company, although no longer locally owned, continues to make its beloved Tastykake snack cakes in the city, as it has since 1914. Beer, soft pretzels, scrapple, ice cream, and candy are other modern food processing industries whose manufacturing traditions extend back many years in Philadelphia. In 2010 Tastykake (as Tasty Baking Company is known to locals) moved from its longtime base in North Philadelphia’s Nicetown neighborhood—a once bustling industrial area that was home to such major manufacturers as Midvale Steel, Brown Instrument (precision gauges), George W. Blabon (oilcloth and linoleum), Atwater Kent (radios), and the Budd Company (auto and rail car bodies)—to the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. The latter location, formerly the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, had itself been a major industrial area, the site of government shipbuilding since the U.S. Navy moved there in the 1870s. The Navy shut down most of its operations at the Navy Yard in the late twentieth century, after which the city took over the site and converted it to a business and industrial park. Among Tastykake’s neighbors at the Navy Yard is the Aker Philadelphia Shipyard, a Norwegian company that makes large tanker vessels. Aker is continuing a Philadelphia commercial ship building tradition that dates to the seventeenth century. At the other end of the city, adjacent to Northeast Philadelphia Airport, the Anglo-Italian company AgustaWestland expanded its helicopter manufacturing facilities in 2008 and continues yet another Philadelphia tradition of making rotary winged IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY 14
aircraft that dates to the earliest years of the industry in the 1940s. These large firms—whether foreign conglomerates such as Aker and AgustaWestland or home-grown companies such as Tastykake and Dietz & Watson—are the new face of large-scale manufacturing in Philadelphia. Employing anywhere from several hundred to a thousand or more workers, they do not operate on the scale of the industrial giants of the past but are major players in the city’s still significant manufacturing sector. There is one Philadelphia manufacturer that does approach the giant firms of the past in terms of size and scope of operations: Cardone, an auto parts re-manufacturer headquartered in the Lawndale neighborhood of lower Northeast Philadelphia. A family-owned company founded in 1970, Cardone has some 6,000 employees in multiple locations throughout North America, about 2,300 of whom work at its assembly plant and executive offices in Philadelphia. These big companies are the exception rather than the rule, however. Of the approximately 1,100 manufacturers in the greater Philadelphia area in 2014, sixty percent employed twenty or fewer workers. The real strength of Philadelphia manufacturing in the early twenty-first century, as in its heyday of a century earlier, is in its many smaller specialty manufacturers. Particularly revealing in this regard is the story of the Disston company. Founded as a small saw making shop by English immigrant Henry Disston in 1840, it grew over time into the world’s largest saw manufacturer, a familyowned enterprise that at its height employed some 4,000 workers at its sprawling plant along the Delaware River in the Tacony neighborhood. The company began downsizing significantly in the mid-twentieth century and was largely broken up after the Disston family sold it in 1955. It is still operating on the same site, however, although on a greatly reduced scale. Now known as Disston Precision, the company employs a few dozen workers who, in addition to making custom metal plates and other specialty items, continue to make precision saw blades, using both the latest in high-tech electronic equipment and century-old machinery still in place at the plant. Disston is the only company among Philadelphia’s early twentieth-century industrial giants that is still in business in the city. Another example of the change in scale in Philadelphia manufacturing in recent years can be seen in its beer making industry. Breweries were first established in Philadelphia in the 1680s and have been an important part of the city ever since. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the city was home to dozens of major breweries; indeed, there is a neighborhood in North Philadelphia known as “Brewerytown” where a number of them were located. Many older Philadelphians still remember drinking Schmidt’s and Ortlieb’s, locally made beers that were national brands into the late twentieth century. All of the large breweries are now gone, but Philadelphia has become an important center in the smaller but very popular craft beer movement. This same phenomenon—smaller companies producing specialty items for niche markets—can be seen playing out all across Philadelphia, from beer making and metal working to any number of other industries. @ Above: Aerial view of Disston Saw Works in Tacony, c. 1884, when it was the world’s largest saw manufacturer. Although Disston’s current workforce of a few dozen is a fraction of the size in the company’s heyday, the firm, now known as Disston Precision, has occupied this site in Tacony since the 1870s and is the only manufacturer among Philadelphia’s industrial giants of the past that is still in business in the city. IMAGE FROM HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA, 1609-1884, BY THOMAS SCHARF AND THOMSON WESTCOTT. Below: Yards Brewing Company on Delaware Avenue in Northern Liberties. Established in 1994, Yards is one of several popular craft breweries that began operating in Philadelphia in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Except for a brief hiatus in the 1980s, beer has been brewed continuously in Philadelphia since the 1680s. PHOTO BY TIM MCCUSKER, 2015. CHAPTER ONE 15
Page 1 and 2: IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
Page 3 and 4: IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
Page 5 and 6: CONTENTS 4 FOREWORD 6 ACKNOWLEDGEME
Page 7 and 8: @ Michael A. Nutter, Former Mayor,
Page 9 and 10: For the historical images that enli
Page 11 and 12: This is a history of manufacturing
Page 13 and 14: While other manufacturing centers w
Page 15: @ Above: Workers at Midvale Steel p
Page 19 and 20: would hold into the early nineteent
Page 21 and 22: technology, transportation, and com
Page 23 and 24: age had joined the Religious Societ
Page 25 and 26: Philadelphians lived in the city’
Page 27 and 28: “and many boats, which are useful
Page 29 and 30: Quaker merchant Thomas Masters purc
Page 31 and 32: INDUSTRY INVENTORS Manufacturers in
Page 33 and 34: Quaker upbringing. Known as the “
Page 35 and 36: MAKING A CASE FOR AMERICAN MANUFACT
Page 37 and 38: up cotton manufacturing operations
Page 39 and 40: After receiving a patent for the en
Page 41 and 42: The Globe Mill on the Cohocksink Cr
Page 43 and 44: @ Opposite: Detail from 1849 map sh
Page 45 and 46: of the town’s total population. S
Page 47 and 48: On a positive note, a group of Fran
Page 49 and 50: factories with a powerful energy so
Page 51 and 52: and flagship for Commodore Matthew
Page 53 and 54: @ Left: Penn Steam Engine & Boiler
Page 55 and 56: Garrett & Eastwick Locomotive Works
Page 57 and 58: seen. The episode brought Hagner co
Page 59 and 60: United States, the nation’s de-fa
Page 61 and 62: The turn of the twentieth century p
Page 63 and 64: in various categories at the Centen
Page 65 and 66: makers, 20 stove manufacturers, 12
Page 67 and 68:
and lace, in which Kensington manuf
Page 69 and 70:
through exploitation of their worke
Page 71 and 72:
@ Left: Yard locomotives at Midvale
Page 73 and 74:
among the largest in the world at t
Page 75 and 76:
factory nearby. This became the lar
Page 77 and 78:
she writes of the sad circumstances
Page 79 and 80:
@ Clockwise, starting from the top:
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BEER AND TOBACCO Beer making contin
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MILK AND ICE CREAM Like any major c
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the Philadelphia Phillies. Located
Page 87 and 88:
and a half later from a city of man
Page 89 and 90:
After major cutbacks in the auto in
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into countless lunchboxes throughou
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hangar space in 1980 at Northeast P
Page 95 and 96:
is the nation’s largest manufactu
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fuel for local industries, current
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centralize operations in the buildi
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BOOKS AND ARTICLES Bridenbaugh, Car
Page 103 and 104:
Sutcliffe, Andrea J. Steam: The Unt
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Penrose, Bartholomew & Thomas shipy
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PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA H
Page 109 and 110:
@ Left: An early Kingsbury advertis
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PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA 1
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Aerodynamics. The name DeVal was a
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packaging and shipping; and nondest
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Another step in product advancement
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PHILLY CASE From the basement of a
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Under Yost’s direction, The Rowla
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The story of Tioga Pipe is a classi
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neighborhood. The increased product
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Humphrys is one of the oldest manuf
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The Doherty brothers realized, to s
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Centrally located off the Pennsylva
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Jersey and Delaware. Outgrowing the
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Philadelphia is famous for its appr
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injection molded plastic to enter t
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had expanded from smaller pieces fo
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for many years and they know the fi
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furnace as well as a custom flame h
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and Salmon Streets. The company wou
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The company capitalized on the stra
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discharges. The supercapacitors are
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products that are custom designed t
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Today manufacturing matters, now mo
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LEADERSHIP SPONSORS Historical Publ
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