In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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View showing P. & R. [Philadelphia &
Reading] Railroad Tracks and present
conditions upon Pennsylvania Ave.
This 1893 Department of Public Works
illustration shows how the railroad
fundamentally altered large parts of the
city landscape in the nineteenth century.
A number of rail lines can be seen cutting
through downtown Philadelphia at Broad
Street near Callowhill Street and, in the
inset at upper left, at Pennsylvania Avenue
and Twentieth Street. Baldwin Locomotive
Works is at center right.
PHILADELPHIA WATER DEPARTMENT HISTORICAL
COLLECTION/PHILLYH2O.ORG.
with some 250,000 employees and a budget
bigger than that of the U.S. government.
The other Philadelphia-based railroad, the
Reading, chartered in 1833 as the Philadelphia
& Reading Railroad, was also a major presence
in the city. Its former terminal and head house
buildings on East Market Street in Center City
are now popular Philadelphia landmarks.
CHEMICALS AND
PHARMACEUTICALS
Philadelphia was also a national leader in
the paint and chemical industry, which came
to be centered mostly on the Schuylkill River.
Wetherill & Brothers, founded in 1762, built
a paint factory at Broad and Chestnut Streets
in 1809, then one at Twelfth and Cherry
Streets after the earlier one burned down, and
finally a much larger facility in 1847 on the
Schuylkill River near Thirtieth Street. John
Harrison began making sulphuric acid in
Northern Liberties in the 1790s and later
moved to Kensington. In 1863 the company,
run by his grandsons and known as Harrison
Brothers, erected a large factory on the
Schuylkill River in Grays Ferry, downstream
from Wetherill’s. Both of these companies
remained local, family-run chemical firms into
the early twentieth century.
The American pharmaceutical industry
essentially began in Philadelphia in the early
nineteenth century. Originally, local druggists
ground and mixed their own medicines,
occasionally branching into small-scale manufacturing.
In 1812 Charles Hagner began
large-scale grinding of medicinal materials
into powder at his water-powered mill at the
Falls of Schuylkill. His operation has been
called the first drug mill in America. It all
began when Hagner was engaged by a prominent
local druggist to ground several tons of
cream of tartar into powder, a job that would
have taken months using the usual mortar and
pestle method. Hagner did the work at his
grinding mill in one night and delivered the
completed order to the druggist the next day.
Incredulous, and fearing his product must
have been ruined, the druggist convened a
committee of experts to examine the powder.
They declared it perfectly fine, indeed some of
the best ground cream of tartar they had ever
IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY
54