In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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@ In this 1840 advertisement, the Morris Iron Works notes that in addition to its foundry at Schuylkill Seventh and Market Streets (now Sixteenth and Market), it has “provided on the Delaware [River, in Port Richmond]…a commodious Shop and Wharf, with a Crane, expressly for the Construction and Repair of Steam-Boat Engines & Boilers.” SOCIETY PRINT COLLECTION, HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA. Philadelphia’s shipbuilding industry declined in general in the early years of the nineteenth century and then, in later decades, as construction with iron, steel, and steam rendered their earlier methods obsolete. One company that successfully made the transition from traditional to modern construction methods was Cramp Shipyard. William Cramp was born in Kensington in 1807 and served an apprenticeship with a local ship builder before opening his own shipyard in 1830. He secured contracts for both commercial and military vessels and by the late 1840s had moved to the large riverfront site in lower Kensington that would be the company’s home for a century. Here it would grow into one of the nation’s largest shipyards and Philadelphia’s biggest employers. Charles Cramp joined his father’s firm in the late 1840s and soon began to introduce new construction methods using iron, steel, and steam. As a boy, Charles had witnessed the city’s first iron-hulled vessel, produced in Kensington around 1838, being carted by boilermakers through the streets to the waterfront. Charles oversaw implementation of more modern ship building techniques at Cramp & Sons, even as his father continued to carve wooden models of ships to be built and personally select the trees to be cut for the various parts of vessels. THE IRON AGE Shipbuilders worked closely with boiler and engine makers at this time, as the latter often had more familiarity with the new materials and techniques than the shipbuilders. I. P. Morris and Company, one of Philadelphia’s largest iron foundries, was established in 1828 and located at Sixteenth and Market Streets. In 1840 the company set up a shop on the Delaware River in Port Richmond “expressly for the construction and repair of steam-boat engines and boilers.” Cramp & Sons worked most closely with the Kensington firm of Neafie & Levy, which was founded in 1844 as Reaney, Neafie & Levy and specialized in iron boats, marine steam engines, and screw propellers. Also known as Penn Steam Engine and Boiler Works, Neafie & Levy later became a shipbuilding company itself, one of the first American firms to make both iron ships and the steam engines that ran them. They made the U.S. Navy’s first submarine, the Alligator, in 1862. Cramp & Sons partnered with Neafie & Levy on several projects, including building the Sampson, the nation’s first screwpropelled tugboat, in 1846. During the Civil War Cramp worked with Southwark iron founder Merrick & Sons on the famous wooden-hulled ironclad ship, the New Ironsides, which launched from Cramp’s Kensington yard in 1862. Eventually, Cramp & Sons began making its own engines, and in 1891 it acquired I. P. Morris & Company, but in the IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY 50
@ Left: Penn Steam Engine & Boiler Works advertisement, 1854. Established in 1844 in Kensington as Reaney, Neafie & Levy, the company specialized in iron boats and engines, and later steam fire engines. It remained in operation until 1907. PRINT DEPARTMENT, LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA. early years it partnered with companies such as Neafie & Levy and Merrick & Sons on this aspect of shipbuilding. Philadelphia’s numerous iron foundries, machine shops, and boilermakers also supplied machinery for industries other than shipbuilding. In 1851 I. P. Morris & Company installed turbines at the Fairmount Waterworks, the first such large-scale turbine installation in America. Later, they installed turbines at Niagara Falls. Merrick & Sons’ Southwark Iron Foundry, established in 1836, made machinery for sugar refining and gas works, including equipment for the new Philadelphia Gas Works, which was also established in 1836. Joseph Harrison, after spectacular success building railroads in Russia in the 1840s, returned to Philadelphia and founded the Harrison Safety Boiler Works, which made a new, much safer type of boiler that was invented and patented by Harrison in 1859. A Harrison safety boiler was installed that year at William Sellers & Company, one of the city’s major machine tool builders. Firms such as Morris, Merrick, Harrison, and Sellers were ushering in the “Iron Age” in Philadelphia in the mid-nineteenth century, building all manner of heavy machinery and transforming the city into a gritty industrial landscape. The coming of the railroad around this same time brought an even more radical transformation of the landscape, obliterating many of the remaining vestiges of William Penn’s “greene country towne.” LOCOMOTIVES No industry embodied the age of iron and steel in Philadelphia more than that of the railroad. Together with the invention of the high-pressure steam engine and the introduction of anthracite coal, the railroad would revolutionize manufacturing in the city and elsewhere in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Functioning railroads had been introduced in England in the 1810s and Oliver Evans was promoting their use in America as early as 1813, when he wrote that “the time will come when people will travel in stages [on rails] moved by steam engines, from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles in an hour.” Philadelphia got its first operating railroad in June 1832 when the Philadelphia to Germantown portion of the new Philadelphia, Germantown, Norristown Railroad began operation. The rail cars were drawn by horses until November of that year, when Matthias Baldwin’s new locomotive engine, Old Ironsides, was put in use on the line. The United States Below: Notice in the November 24, 1832 American Daily Advertiser announcing service on the new Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad. The notice reported that “The Locomotive Engine, (built by M. W. Baldwin, of this city) will depart daily, when the weather is fair, with a Train of Passenger Cars.” DAVID KENNEDY WATERCOLOR COLLECTION, HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA. CHAPTER THREE 51
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 and 16: @ Above: Workers at Midvale Steel p
Page 17 and 18: aircraft that dates to the earliest
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 flagship for Commodore Matthew
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:
Page 81 and 82: BEER AND TOBACCO Beer making contin
Page 83 and 84: MILK AND ICE CREAM Like any major c
Page 85 and 86: 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
Page 91 and 92: into countless lunchboxes throughou
Page 93 and 94: hangar space in 1980 at Northeast P
Page 95 and 96: is the nation’s largest manufactu
Page 97 and 98: fuel for local industries, current
Page 99 and 100: centralize operations in the buildi
Page 101 and 102: BOOKS AND ARTICLES Bridenbaugh, Car
Page 103 and 104:
Sutcliffe, Andrea J. Steam: The Unt
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Penrose, Bartholomew & Thomas shipy
Page 107 and 108:
PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA H
Page 109 and 110:
@ Left: An early Kingsbury advertis
Page 111 and 112:
PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA 1
Page 113 and 114:
Aerodynamics. The name DeVal was a
Page 115 and 116:
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
Page 121 and 122:
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
Page 137 and 138:
injection molded plastic to enter t
Page 139 and 140:
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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