In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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@ Top, left: Assembly line of passenger rail cars at the Budd plant, c. 1940. Stainless steel rail cars was one of Budd’s specialties, along with steel bodies for automobiles, airplanes, and other vehicles. Budd operated in Philadelphia from 1912 to 2002. BUDD COMPANY PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, HAGLEY MUSEUM AND LIBRARY. Top, right: Making a sheet metal car body at the Budd plant, c. 1940. PRINT AND PICTURE COLLECTION, FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA. operate but with a drastically reduced workforce). By the turn of the twenty-first century Philadelphia’s economy had evolved into something very different from that which had sustained the city for the previous 150 years, an economy in which the manufacturing giants of the past would have very little role. Because Philadelphia manufacturing had always been so diverse, the decline was more gradual than sudden. Whereas oneindustry cities like Detroit and Pittsburgh experienced abrupt contractions whose effects were immediate and severe, the transformation in Philadelphia was spread out over many sectors and took decades to unfold. Nor was it a uniform process; even as certain industries went into precipitous decline, others continued to operate and some actually prospered. The companies that did remain viable into the late twentieth century were not the huge manufacturers of the nineteenth century, but younger firms, those that were founded or had come into prominence in the early 1900s. Several of these companies have been profiled previously; following are other major ones. EDWARD G. BUDD COMPANY Of the top twenty-five manufacturers in Philadelphia in the 1920s, only the Edward G. Budd Company was still a major producer in its field in the 1990s. Budd’s main product was stainless steel automobile bodies, along with bodies for rail and subway cars, airplanes, and other applications. The company was founded in 1912 when Edward Budd (1870-1946) left Hale & Kilburn, a Philadelphia maker of rail car components, and established a company to make all-steel automobile bodies. (Most early automobiles had wooden bodies.) Originally working in locations in Port Richmond, the company grew quickly and built a large plant on Hunting Park Avenue in Nicetown in 1915. That same year Budd made an all-steel auto body for a Dodge Brothers touring car which was very successful. This initiated a long-term partnership between the two firms, although Budd would eventually supply bodies for all of the major American auto makers. Budd’s Nicetown plant grew to be an immense facility that employed over 7,000 workers. The company pioneered the use of stainless steel in passenger railcars and aircraft bodies in the 1930s, using a new “shotweld” fabricating process that it developed. Budd had plants throughout the world in addition to its flagship factory in Nicetown and from the 1940s to the 1980s operated a large facility in the Bustleton section of Northeast Philadelphia that mainly produced rail car bodies. In 1972 the company moved its corporate headquarters from Philadelphia to Michigan to be closer to the auto industry. In 1978 it was acquired by a German company. IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY 86
After major cutbacks in the auto industry, Budd closed its Philadelphia plant in 2002 and moved all of its operations to the Midwest. A very visible reminder of the company legacy that remains in Philadelphia is The Pioneer, the stainless steel seaplane Budd built in 1931 that is on permanent display outside The Franklin Institute. ROHM & HAAS The Rohm & Haas Company owes its history in Philadelphia directly to the city’s preeminence in the leather industry. Otto Rohm and Otto Haas founded a company in Germany in 1907 to manufacture and sell their new product for tanning leather, Oropon. Two years later, while Rohm stayed in Germany, Haas left to establish the company in America, settling in Philadelphia specifically because of the strength of the city’s leather industry. One of the company’s first big American clients was Foerderer Leather, then the largest leather works in the world. (Foerderer workers no doubt welcomed the switch to Oropon, which rendered obsolete the traditional tanning method of soaking skins in a liquid mixture of animal dung.) Rohm & Haas had a plant north of Philadelphia in Bristol, Bucks County, but in 1921 it acquired the Lenning Chemical Company in Bridesburg and established manufacturing operations there as well. In the 1930s Rohm & Haas introduced Plexiglass, which found early important use in cockpits for military aircraft during World War II and wide use in other applications thereafter. The company made many other types of products over the years and grew to be an international chemical giant. By 1999 Rohm & Haas was the largest specialty chemical company in the world. While its corporate headquarters remained in Philadelphia, over time it moved most of its manufacturing activities out of the city and in 2010 ceased all manufacturing within the city proper. In 2009 Rohm & Haas was acquired by Dow Chemical, which for a time maintained the company corporate headquarters in Philadelphia. ATLANTIC REFINING AND GULF OIL Philadelphia’s two major oil refiners, Atlantic and Gulf, both prospered through the late twentieth century as automobiles proliferated in America. Both also went through a series of ownership and name changes before being purchased by another local oil company, Sunoco, and then becoming part of the larger merger from which the city’s current major refiner, Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), was formed in 2012. PES’ two adjacent refineries on the Schuylkill River in Southwest Philadelphia, Point Breeze and Girard Point (the former Atlantic and Gulf facilities, respectively), employ some 1,400 workers @ The March-April 1958 edition of the Rohm & Haas employee magazine The Formula featured an article entitled “Operation Bridesburg” that gave a history and description of company operations at its Bridesburg plant. Rohm & Haas made chemicals in Bridesburg from the time it purchased the Lenning Chemical Company, the site’s original occupant, in 1920 until it ceased operations at the plant in 2010. IMAGES RETRIEVED ONLINE, 2015. CHAPTER FIVE 87
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IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
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IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
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CONTENTS 4 FOREWORD 6 ACKNOWLEDGEME
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@ Michael A. Nutter, Former Mayor,
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For the historical images that enli
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This is a history of manufacturing
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While other manufacturing centers w
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@ Above: Workers at Midvale Steel p
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aircraft that dates to the earliest
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would hold into the early nineteent
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technology, transportation, and com
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age had joined the Religious Societ
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Philadelphians lived in the city’
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“and many boats, which are useful
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Quaker merchant Thomas Masters purc
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INDUSTRY INVENTORS Manufacturers in
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Quaker upbringing. Known as the “
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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:
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 a half later from a city of man
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
Page 105 and 106: 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
Page 117 and 118: Another step in product advancement
Page 119 and 120: PHILLY CASE From the basement of a
Page 121 and 122: Under Yost’s direction, The Rowla
Page 123 and 124: The story of Tioga Pipe is a classi
Page 125 and 126: neighborhood. The increased product
Page 127 and 128: Humphrys is one of the oldest manuf
Page 129 and 130: The Doherty brothers realized, to s
Page 131 and 132: Centrally located off the Pennsylva
Page 133 and 134: Jersey and Delaware. Outgrowing the
Page 135 and 136: Philadelphia is famous for its appr
Page 137 and 138: 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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