In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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
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