In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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Just as the era of large breweries was ending in Philadelphia, however, the craft brewing phenomenon was getting underway. Philadelphia’s first craft brewer, Dock Street Brewing Company (named in honor of the city’s earliest breweries along Dock Creek), was established in 1985. Others followed, including Sam Adams, Independence, and Yards Brewing Company, along with a number of brew pubs that made smaller amounts of beer that they sold on their premises. By the closing years of the twentieth century Philadelphia had become a vibrant center in the craft beer movement. It remains so in the 2010s. There was no equivalent to the craft beer movement in the sugar industry. With the closing of Philadelphia’s last two refineries, Jack Frost (formerly Pennsylvania Sugar Refining and popularly known as “the Sugar House”) in Fishtown in 1981 and Amstar (formerly Franklin Sugar and Domino Sugar) in South Philadelphia in 1982, sugar refining in the city came to an end. In a fitting piece of symbolism, the Sugar House property gave rise to Sugar House Casino in 2010—what had once been a major manufacturing site became home to the epitome of a service industry. @ Historic and modern aerial views of the Atlantic oil refinery in Southwest Philadelphia, both looking north with the Philadelphia skyline in the background. Top: View of the refinery, with the Schuylkill River in the foreground, c. 1926. AERO SERVICE CORPORATION COLLECTION, LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA. Above: View of the same refinery, owned by Philadelphia Energy Solutions, c. 2010s. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHILADELPHIA ENERGY SOLUTIONS. and process some fourteen million gallons of crude oil daily in the mid-2010s, constituting the largest as well as the oldest continuously operating oil refining complex on the American east coast. BEER AND SUGAR By the latter part of the twentieth century, the beer and sugar industries in Philadelphia had each consolidated down to just two surviving firms: brewers Ortlieb’s and Schmidt’s and refiners Jack Frost and Amstar. All four remained large-scale manufacturers into the early 1980s but were gone by the end of the decade. Ortlieb’s went out of business when it was purchased by rival Schmidt’s in 1981. When Schmidt’s itself closed in 1987 it marked the first time in over three hundred years that Philadelphia did not have a major operating brewery. OTHER MAJOR FOOD PROCESSORS If large-scale food processing in Philadelphia ended in the sugar and beer industries in the 1980s, it continued in the city’s other food sectors, anchored by several longtime local companies making snack cakes, lunch meats, and rolls. Tasty Baking Company was founded in 1914 by two new arrivals to Philadelphia, baker Philip Baur and egg salesman Herbert Morris, who had the novel idea of selling individually wrapped, fresh-baked snack cakes. They originally set up shop in Germantown, but early success led to the opening of a large plant in 1922 on Hunting Park Avenue in Nicetown, down the street from the Budd Company. Known to locals by the name of its signature product, Tastykake, the company’s baking facilities ran twentyfour hours a day, six days a week, producing snack cakes and pies that made their way IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY 88
into countless lunchboxes throughout the Philadelphia region and beyond. In 2010 Tastykake moved to a new modern production facility at the Navy Yard, where it employs some 800 workers who continue to make the company’s well-known treats. In 2011 Tastykake was acquired by Georgiabased food conglomerate Flowers Foods and its products are now distributed nationwide. The two critical components in Philadelphia’s quintessential cheesesteak and hoagie sandwiches are the meats and the roll. Among the city’s many makers of these products the best-known are deli meat manufacturer Dietz & Watson and baker Amoroso’s. Dietz & Watson was founded in Philadelphia in 1939 by German immigrant Gottlieb Dietz, a sausage maker, who was in partnership briefly with a ham smoker named Walter Watson. Following Dietz’s death, his daughter Ruth Eni, known affectionately as “Momma Dietz,” took over the company and expanded it significantly. The company claims to be the second largest deli meat maker in the U.S. @ Above: Philadelphia Brewing Company worker removing cooked wort, a liquid extracted in the brewing process, from a tank at the company’s brewery on Amber Street in Kensington in 2012. The Philadelphia Brewing Company building, the only purpose-built brewery still in operation in Philadelphia, was home to the Weisbrod & Hess brewery from 1885 to 1939 and later housed Yards Brewing Company in the early 2000s. When Yards moved to its current location on Delaware Avenue in Northern Liberties in 2007, the building became the home of the new Philadelphia Brewing Company. PHOTO BY THERESA STIGALE FOR HIDDEN CITY PHILADELPHIA. Philadelphia sugar houses, past and present. Left: Pennsylvania Sugar Refining/ Jack Frost, popularly known as “the Sugar House,” on the Delaware River in Fishtown, as seen in 1936. PHOTO FROM PHILADELPHIA RECORD PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA. Below: Sugar House Casino, Philadelphia’s first gambling house, which opened on the site in 2010. PHOTO BY TIM MCCUSKER, 2015. CHAPTER FIVE 89
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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
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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 88: and a half later from a city of man
Page 89: After major cutbacks in the auto in
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
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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