In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

is the nation’s largest manufacturer of energyefficient
windows and doors. Founded in
1975 by Irv and Elaine Levin and now run by
their son Alan and his wife Fran, the company
employs over 325 workers at its extensive
complex of buildings in lower Northeast
Philadelphia. Northeast Building Products
produces over 200,000 windows annually and
was mentioned by President Barack Obama in
his 2010 State of the Union address.
Not far from these firms is the Frank J.
Butch Company, a small family-run machine
shop that manufactures specialty hose fittings
for refineries and chemical companies.
Established in 1933, the company originally
made parts for Baldwin Locomotive, the Budd
Company, and others, one of hundreds of
small shops throughout Philadelphia that
supplied specialized parts to the city’s industrial
giants. At its height in the mid to late
1960s, Butch had some fifty employees, most
of whom made gun cleaning rods for the military
during the Vietnam War. The firm now
employs ten workers and is run by Frank
Butch III, the founder’s grandson. Frank is
nearing retirement and wonders about the
future of the company. His grown children
have other professional careers and no interest
in running a machine shop. Perhaps he
will find a buyer for the enterprise or perhaps
it will quietly close at some point, as have
countless other small Philadelphia manufacturers
over the years.
PHILADELPHIA’ S
MANUFACTURING
LANDSCAPE IN THE EARLY
TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY
Amuneal, PTR, and the Butch company are
clustered within a few miles of each other in
an industrial area along the Delaware River in
lower Northeast Philadelphia, one of several
areas of concentrated industrial activity
scattered throughout the city in the early
twentieth-first century. The city’s two biggest
manufacturing areas are now in the South/
Southwest and Far Northeast. The South/
Southwest area includes the Navy Yard,
Philadelphia Energy Solutions’ oil refineries
on the Schuylkill River, and an extended
Industrial Districts
and Real Estate
industrial area north and west of Philadelphia
International Airport. In the Far Northeast,
the area immediately surrounding Northeast
Philadelphia Airport is home to many manufacturers
and there is a large industrial park
on the northern edge of the city, east of
Roosevelt Boulevard.
Parts of the South/Southwest and Far
Northeast industrial areas were created in the
late twentieth century through targeted land
use planning for industry. The prime mover
in this effort was the Philadelphia Industrial
Development Corporation (PIDC), the city’s
public-private economic development organization.
Founded in 1958 as a nonprofit
partnership between the City of Philadelphia
and the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of
Commerce, PIDC is a major player in
Philadelphia’s industrial economy, offering
financing, real estate development, and other
services to spur investment, support business
growth, and foster development.
ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPACT
The impact of industrial development on
the environment has been a concern for
centuries, from the protests of local residents
against the pollution of Dock Creek by
@
This map from a 2010 PIDC planning
report on industrial land use in Philadelphia
shows the city comprised of fifteen industrial
areas in the early twentieth century. The
largest areas are in the Far Northeast and
South/Southwest sections of the city, as well
as along the Delaware River extending from
the lower Northeast into Kensington.
FROM AN INDUSTRIAL LAND & MARKET STRATEGY FOR THE
CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER 2010, PHILADELPHIA
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION.
CHAPTER FIVE
93