In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

that Matthias Baldwin made a more efficient
stationary steam engine and John Stetson
came up with a new type of hat. Perhaps
some young inventor is working at this very
moment in a Philadelphia makers shop on an
innovative new idea that will spawn a highly
successful business, one that will perhaps
rival Baldwin Locomotive or Stetson Hat in
its impact.
EPILOGUE/ PENN’ S
VISION
@
Above: “Where Art Meets Industry,”
homepage of Globe Dye Works website,
2015. The Globe Dye Works building is a
former textile dying plant in East Frankford
that was operated by the same local family
from 1865 until it closed in 2005.
It was purchased in 2007 and renovated
by a group of Philadelphia craftsmen/
entrepreneurs who specialize in adaptive
re-use of industrial buildings. The building
now houses offices, artist studios, and small
manufacturing shops. Such adaptive re-use
is one of the hallmarks of the
Maker Movement.
Opposite, top: The William Penn statue,
manufactured at the Tacony Iron Works,
sits in the courtyard of Philadelphia City
Hall in 1894, awaiting its placement atop
the building.
PHOTO POSTCARD, TACONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Opposite, bottom: William Penn looks out
over his City of Brotherly Love from atop
City Hall.
PHOTO BY LAUREN WORK, 2014.
Other types of maker spaces can be found
throughout Philadelphia. The Jewelry Trades
Building at Eighth and Sansom Streets in
the heart of the city’s famed Jewelers’ Row
district houses the studios of over fifty jewelry
artisans. The Globe Dye Works building in
East Frankford, home for 140 years to a
family-run textile dying business, now houses
a number of small workshops, from boat
builders to soap makers. The Globe Dye
building also houses the offices of the
Manufacturing Alliance of Philadelphia. While
Alliance President Steve Jurash advocates
more broadly for the region’s manufacturing
sector, craftsmen and entrepreneurs elsewhere
in the building work to develop their products
and businesses.
One such business is Hand in Hand, maker
of soaps and bath and beauty products. The
company was founded in 2011 by husband
and wife Bill Glabb and Courtney Apple,
who originally worked out of their home and
now occupy a 6,000 square-foot space in the
Globe Dye building. Hand in Hand has five
full-time workers, augmented by occasional
part timers as needed. Like many in the Maker
Movement, it is a socially conscious company.
The owners work to ensure that company
products are safe and made through fair trade.
They also donate a bar of soap and a month of
clean water for each product that is purchased.
Hand in Hand has worked with Martha Stewart
and been featured in her magazine.
These maker spaces are the modern versions
of the workshops of old, where artisans
made things and inventors tinkered with
new ideas and products. It was in such spaces
And so it goes in Philadelphia manufacturing
in the early twenty-first century: older
firms continue to make traditional products,
using both old and new technologies, while
young entrepreneurs develop innovative
products and processes. Ancient traditions
such as shipbuilding and beer making continue,
in both modern and traditional ways.
Small artisan manufacturers serve specialized,
niche markets, staying close to their customers,
much as their colonial predecessors
did, while elsewhere in the city large-scale
food processing continues and heavy industries
make oil tankers, helicopters, and subway
cars for national and international markets.
Meanwhile, concerted efforts from both the
top-down (the energy hub initiative) and
bottom-up (the Maker Movement) have the
potential to transform the city’s economy and
revive its manufacturing sector. Manufacturing
remains vital in Philadelphia in the early
twenty-first century, with enormous potential
for the future. How that potential is realized
in the coming years remains to be seen.
As this book was being completed in the
summer of 2015, Dow Chemical announced
that most of the workers at its headquarters
on Independence Mall in Old City, the former
Rohm & Haas building, were being moved
out of the city to suburban locations, a move
that seems to signal the beginning of the end
of a major presence for Dow in Philadelphia.
This presence dates back to Dow’s predecessor
Rohm & Haas beginning in 1907 and before
that to Rohm & Haas’ predecessor Lenning
Chemical in 1819. Meanwhile, Lannett, a
growing generic drug manufacturer that was
founded in 1942 and has facilities throughout
Northeast Philadelphia, is making plans to
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