In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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An 1832 illustration of the Philadelphia,
Germantown, & Norristown Railroad at
the Philadelphia station at Ninth and Green
Streets. Powered by a Baldwin locomotive,
this was the first operating railroad
in Philadelphia.
PRINT DEPARTMENT, LIBRARY COMPANY
OF PHILADELPHIA.
Gazette reported on November 24, 1832, that
“The beautiful locomotive engine and tender,
built by Mr. Baldwin, of this city…were for
the first time placed on the road. The engine
travelled about six miles, working with
perfect accuracy and ease and with great
velocity.” The engine was only used in fair
weather at first, as it did not have enough
traction to hold the rails in the rain.
Matthias Baldwin (1795-1866) had come
a long way since his 1811 apprenticeship
to a Frankford jeweler. He had formed a
partnership in 1825 with a Philadelphia
machinist to make bookbinding tools and
machinery as well as devices for other industries.
An innovative craftsmen who was
always tinkering, in 1828 he built a small
five-horse power stationary steam engine that
represented a significant improvement over
other engines of that time. (The engine is
now on display at the Smithsonian National
Museum of American History.) Baldwin soon
turned his focus to steam engine manufacture,
particularly for railroads. He made
ten new locomotive engines in the years
immediately following the 1832 debut of
Old Ironsides, each with an improvement of
his design. In 1835 he founded the Baldwin
Locomotive Works and within three years
the company had built some forty-five percent
of the domestically produced locomotive
engines in use in the United States. Baldwin
eventually became one of the largest locomotive
manufacturers in the world, occupying
a 200-acre complex at Broad and Spring
Garden Streets and employing over 18,000
workers, the largest private company by far
in Philadelphia history. The firm produced
over 1,500 locomotives during Matthias
Baldwin’s lifetime, engines that powered
trains on five different continents.
Baldwin’s was actually one of three important
locomotive works in early nineteenthcentury
Philadelphia. All were founded
within a few years of each other in the 1830s,
were significant innovators in the industry,
and were located near one another in what
is now the Spring Garden neighborhood
just north of Center City. Norris Locomotive
Works, founded in 1832 as the American
Steam Carriage Company, employed several
hundred workers at its plant at Seventeenth
and Hamilton Streets and was America’s
largest locomotive works before being
overtaken by Baldwin. In 1836 Norris’
famous locomotive, The George Washington,
climbed the Belmont Inclined Plane of the
Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad with a
full load, the first engine in the world to
ascend a hill by its own power. Between 1832
and 1866 Norris produced about 1,000 locomotives
which were sold all over the world.
IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY
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