In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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Above: Members of the Eni family,
proprietors of the Dietz & Watson lunch
meat company since its founding in 1939,
pose inside a company food processing
facility in 2014. Ruth “Momma Dietz”
Eni is second from right.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL SPAIN-SMITH.
Below: Tastykake’s new home at the
Navy Yard. Founded in 1914, the Tasty
Baking Company moved to the Navy Yard
in 2010, after having been based in
Nicetown since 1922.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TASTY BAKING COMPANY.
When Dietz & Watson’s original location
downtown at Front and Vine Streets was
needed in 1975 for the completion of
Interstate 95, the company moved to its
present location on the Delaware River in
lower Northeast Philadelphia, just above the
Frankford Arsenal. And when a large food
processing plant it had in New Jersey was
destroyed by fire in 2013, the family-owned
and -operated company decided to expand its
Northeast Philadelphia facility and consolidate
a number of operations there. Construction on
the new facility is due to be completed in 2015
and Dietz & Watson is expected to employ
some 850 workers at the site.
Amoroso’s Baking Company was founded
by Italian immigrant Vincenzo Amoroso
and his two sons in Camden, New Jersey,
in 1904 and moved to West Philadelphia
in 1914. Its hearth-baked bread and rolls
are now distributed nationwide. Still familyowned,
Amoroso’s employs over 400 workers
at its West Philadelphia and Vineland, New
Jersey, facilities, but in 2015 the company
was in the process of moving its production
operations out of Philadelphia to New Jersey.
Soft pretzels, scrapple, ice cream, and
candy are other Philadelphia favorites that
continue to be manufactured locally. One
food product that is not made in Philadelphia,
and never was, is Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
Cream cheese was developed in New York in
the late nineteenth century. One of the makers
in that area decided to brand its product
“Philadelphia” for marketing purposes, based
on the Philadelphia region’s reputation for
high-quality dairy products. Otherwise, the
product has no connection to the city.
TRANSPORTATION
EQUIPMENT AND PARTS
Philadelphia’s heavy industries in the early
twenty-first century are focused primarily on
the manufacture of transportation equipment
and parts. The largest of these in terms of
number of employees is auto parts re-manufacturer
Cardone Industries, a family-owned
company that was founded in 1970 and
has some 6,000 employees throughout
North America. Some 2,300 are employed at
Cardone’s assembly plant and executive offices
in Lawndale in lower Northeast Philadelphia.
The most high-profile heavy industry in
Philadelphia continues to be shipbuilding,
although helicopter manufacturing is gaining
prominence. After the U.S. Navy decommissioned
the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia
in 1996, the shipbuilding part of the site
was taken over by the Norwegian company
Kvaerner, which renovated the facility and
began constructing large container ships
in 2000, delivering its first vessel in 2003.
Kvaerner was acquired by another Norwegian
company, Aker, in 2005. Aker renamed the
facility Philly Shipyard in 2015. It now employs
some 1,150 workers who make large tanker
and container vessels at the facility’s two huge
dry docks. Twenty such vessels have been
launched by the company since 2003, with
orders outstanding for several more.
Philadelphia has long been a center in the
manufacture of helicopters, starting in the
1940s with the pioneering work of Frank
Piasecki, whose company was eventually
acquired by Boeing. More recently, the Anglo-
Italian company AgustaWestland opened
IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY
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