Workshop of the World

How will they know? How will future generations of Philadelphians have any inkling that their city once thrived as a premier manufacturing center, the fine products issuing from its shops, mills, and plants prized by customers around the nation and the world?

There are few traces left of this history—abandoned factory buildings here and there—and the acres and acres of empty lots that form the landscape of decaying neighborhoods that once brimmed with industrial sites and jobs give no clues. The curious onlooker might ask: What was here? What happened? Delving into the past is to find that the decline of Philadelphia manufacture is directly related to its rise, flip sides in effect of the same coin: of the strengths and weaknesses of a particular kind of industrial system that graced the city, one that rested by and large on the production of quality goods.

A rich agricultural hinterland, an enterprising merchant community, and ready markets for the products processed and crafted in the city transformed Philadelphia into a major commercial entrepôt within a half century of its founding by William Penn in 1681. By the time that delegates convened in Philadelphia in 1776 to write the Declaration of Independence, the city had become second only to London in both the volume and value of the goods that entered and left its port. Philadelphia’s commercial fortunes plummeted, however, in the early nineteenth century as the city lost trade to its chief rival, New York. Rather than enter a long-term period of economic stagnation, Philadelphia fortunately embarked on a new direction that would mark its history for the next 150 years: prospering as a major manufacturing center.

Chronicling Philadelphia’s rise to industrial supremacy is difficult since no single invention, businessperson, event, or circumstance can be designated as a prime mover. Thousands of initiatives occurred as a steady mushrooming of varied enterprise. The individual efforts do add up to a whole, and at least four features characterized Philadelphia’s industrial structure in its heyday.

Diversity, Specialization, Skill

During World War II, a Philadelphia worker gauges a ship propeller on a lathe at Baldwin Locomotive Works, which also produced tanks and locomotives for the war effort. (1942 photograph, Office of War Information, Library of Congress)

First is product diversity. Never a one or two-industry city, Philadelphia became known for its fine textiles and garments, boots and shoes, hats, iron and steel, metal items, machine tools and hardware, locomotives, saws, rugs, furniture, shipbuilding, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, glass, cutlery, jewelry, paints and varnishes, printing and publishing, medical instruments, and so much more.

Second is diversity of work settings. Goods were made in homes, craft shops, sweat shops, small manufactories with hand and foot-driven machinery, water and steamed-powered mills, and multidimensional plants. In their manufacture, some products even passed through several of these settings from initial processing of raw materials to final finishing.

Third is specialization in processes and products. Philadelphia manufacturers did not prosper by competing with mass producers of goods in other parts of the country, but rather by operating in niche markets fashioning high-quality wares or by concentrating in single aspects of production (in textiles, for example, separate establishments emerged respectively to spin special fibers, weave fine clothe and dye elaborate fabrics). Even in the case of Philadelphia’s famous (but relatively few) large firms, such as Baldwin Locomotive, Stetson Hat, and Midvale Steel, specialty production remained the hallmark. Baldwin rarely made two engines alike, meeting particular orders of rail carriers for locomotives with highly specific dimensions and powers; Stetson produced the finest of felt and straw hats and sold them in beautifully-made boxes with silk insides and adorned with the renowned Stetson logo; and Midvale produced a specialty grey steel and took orders for specialty castings and forgings (unlike its other Pennsylvania rivals, U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel).

Fourth is the prevalence of small-to-medium-sized, family-owned-and-managed manufacturing concerns that were reliant on highly skilled workforces. Large, corporate enterprises with armies of mass assembly workers did not form a part of Philadelphia’s economic skyline.

Niche Markets

A number of factors contributed to Philadelphia’s particular industrial history. An abundance of skilled labor allowed for specialty production. The absence of a powerful river-way with waterfalls initially limited the building of large-scale, fully mechanized factories. Philadelphia custom producers further chose not to compete with manufacturers of cheap, standardized products in other cities; their small size afforded a flexibility that allowed them to shift into new product lines and profit in niche markets. Finally, Philadelphia’s elite tended to invest in banks, canal and railroad construction, and mining rather than in local industry; this created a capital scarcity for manufacture in the city, another limit on large-scale ventures, and a vacuum that enterprising native-born and immigrant skilled men could fill in establishing their relatively small custom manufactories.

Although the first use of the label “Workshop of the World” cannot be precisely determined, by the first decade of the twentieth century, the phrase was regularly attached to Philadelphia in journals and books and in the pronouncements of business and civic leaders. However, the success and prosperity that marked Philadelphia industry crested in the 1920s when declines occurred in textile and garment manufacture and in shipbuilding—although new production of radios and electrical appliances sustained employment. The Great Depression saw retrenchments everywhere as unemployment at its peak reached more than 40 percent of the city’s work force. Military orders during World War II then boosted production, but a massive enduring decline in industrial jobs occurred thereafter. At a postwar height in 1953, 359,000 Philadelphians were employed in manufacture, 45 percent of the city’s entire labor force; in our own times, the number of industrial jobs has dramatically fallen to below 30,000, 5 percent of the total. These figures reflect the greater deindustrialization of the United States, though the downward spiral for Philadelphia far exceeded the nation as a whole; since the early 1950s, overall manufacturing jobs have declined from a high of 19.4 million to 14 million, from 32 percent of all employment to 10 percent.

As Philadelphia’s industrial ascent had a particular cast, so did the descent. Philadelphia did not lose manufacturing jobs because national corporations purchased and liquidated the facilities of local firms to undo competition; nor because financiers breezily bought, broke up and sold firms to make paper profits; nor because of foreign competition and the flight of businesses to low-wage areas in the U.S. and abroad—as happened in other American cities and regions over the course of the twentieth century. Rather, Philadelphia’s manufactories closed their doors because of changes in consumerism. Synthetic fibers, for example, wiped out Philadelphia’s famed silk hosiery trade; parquet flooring and wall-to-wall shag carpeting decimated the city’s tapestry rug industry; men stopped wearing fine felt hats to the detriment of Stetson; and cheap hardware merchandized by Sears Roebuck and other mass distributors cut deeply into the sales of the magnificently crafted and durable saws of the Disston Saw Company.

Mass production and marketing systems promoting shifts in consumer preferences to inexpensive disposal products proved the death knell of Philadelphia industry as the city’s custom manufacturers—slow, unable or unwilling to react—failed to compete with standardized producers of goods elsewhere in the county and across the globe. The loss was great not just for the city and its citizens; greater awareness and respect for workmanship and quality was lost as well.

Walter Licht is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840-1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).

Topics: Work, Commerce, and the Economy

African American Migration

People of African descent have migrated to Philadelphia since the seventeenth century. First arriving in bondage, either directly from Africa or by way of the Caribbean, they soon developed a small but robust community that grew throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although African Americans faced employment discrimination, disfranchisement, and periodic race riots in the ⇒ Read More

Airports

Commercial aviation grew dramatically in the United States in the twentieth century, and a number of airports in the Philadelphia area grew to become regional centers of the industry. There was nothing assured or inevitable about this growth, however. It depended on the efforts of local political leaders, investments by the aviation companies, and state ⇒ Read More

Arsenals

For much of the nation’s history Philadelphia held a preeminent position as the provider of logistical support to the U.S. Army, and federal arsenals played a considerable role in the economic life of the city. The Schuylkill Arsenal and Frankford Arsenal were, respectively, the largest manufacturers of uniforms and small-arms ammunition in the country, often ⇒ Read More

Art of Dox Thrash

Dox Thrash (1893-1965) was an accomplished draftsman, printmaker, watercolorist, and painter, whose art reflected his experiences as an African American in Philadelphia. He became well known in the 1940s after developing the Carborundum printmaking technique at the Philadelphia Fine Print Workshop (311 Broad Street) of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. By rubbing coarse ⇒ Read More

Artisans

As skilled laborers who hand-crafted their goods on a per-customer basis, artisans played a central role in the formation of Philadelphia’s prerevolutionary economy: producing essential goods and services and providing social stability within households composed not just of immediate family but also of journeymen and apprentices. American independence brought artisans new economic opportunities as the ⇒ Read More

Automats

Beloved by generations of diners and immortalized in art, song, cinema, and poetic verse, Automats, also known as “automatics” or “waiterless restaurants,” were popular manifestations of an early-twentieth century modernizing impulse. Influenced by Frederick W. Taylor’s studies of scientific management and the widespread use of the assembly line, the Automat removed the process of ordering ⇒ Read More

Automobiles

Since appearing in the 1890s, automobiles have in many ways shaped Greater Philadelphia’s history and geography. Initially a luxury item and later available on a massive scale, cars, while enhancing mobility, required billions of dollars in infrastructure, reordered the landscape of every town and city, and made indelible marks on the region’s architecture, culture, and ⇒ Read More

Automotive Manufacturing

Once a mainstay of Greater Philadelphia’s industrial might and a reflection of the socioeconomic transformations of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the manufacturing of automobiles and related components provided mobility for millions, jobs for many thousands, and lifeblood for towns and cities. First appearing in the 1900s, flourishing during the interwar and postwar periods, ⇒ Read More

Bank of North America

Chartered May 26, 1781, by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation, this enterprise was the first national and truly commercial bank in the United States. Officially titled The President, Directors, and Company of the Bank of North America (BNA) until 1825, the bank was the first created by the national government to do ⇒ Read More

Banking

Greater Philadelphia’s banking roots go deeper than those of any region in the country. Philadelphia was the home of the first commercial bank (1782), the first national bank (1791), the first savings bank (1816), and the first savings and loan association (1831). Until the mid-1980s, celebrated local institutions such as First Pennsylvania, Girard, and Provident ⇒ Read More

Barbershops and Barbers

Throughout much of its modern American history, barbering has been derided as “servile” work, unfit for native-born, white citizens. As such, the profession has been dominated by marginalized groups. In the Philadelphia region, African Americans owned and operated the majority of barber shops during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since then, waves of immigrant ⇒ Read More

Boarding and Lodging Houses

Distinguished by its ubiquitous row houses and high rates of home ownership, Philadelphia has been long been known as a “city of homes.” But for much of its history, it also has been a city of boardinghouses. “Boarding” and “lodging” houses did not enter the local lexicon until the late eighteenth century, but the practice ⇒ Read More

Book Publishing and Publishers

Between 1750 and 1800, Philadelphia became the center for book printing and publishing in the United States, surpassing New York and Boston. Although Philadelphia lost that primacy in the nineteenth century, firms specializing in medical and religious publishing continued to do well. By the mid to late twentieth century, however, as the publishing industry consolidated, ⇒ Read More

Bookselling

Bookstores have long been an important part of the economic and cultural fabric of Philadelphia. As early as the eighteenth century, booksellers set up shop in the city, eager to serve a highly-educated population hungry for information. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the number of bookstores continued to rise. These stores sold a ⇒ Read More

Brownfields Redevelopment

First designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1995, the polluted tracts of land known as “brownfields” resulted from Greater Philadelphia’s industrial heritage. For more than a century, manufacturers generated vast amounts of waste and runoff. After industry declined between the 1950s and the 1980s, acres of abandoned structures and soiled land remained. ⇒ Read More

Campbell Soup Company

Anyone crossing the Benjamin Franklin Bridge from Philadelphia to Camden during most of the twentieth century saw one of the best-known icons of American consumerism, the giant Campbell-Soup-can water towers looming over the company’s flagship cannery. Campbell Soup may have been “America’s Favorite Food,” as the title of the company-sponsored history claims, but it was ⇒ Read More

Canals

Canals transformed the economic and geographic scope of Greater Philadelphia in the first half of the nineteenth century. By providing a cheap and reliable mechanism for shipping goods, these complex technological systems funneled the products of broad hinterland regions to the Quaker City. Although canals delivered a wide variety of goods including farm products, lumber, ⇒ Read More

Carpet Weaving and Rug Making

In its early twentieth-century heyday, Philadelphia’s carpet and rug industry represented this nation’s greatest concentration of factories making household and commercial floor coverings. The Public Ledger boasted that “two wards, in the northern section of the city, produce more carpets than the whole of Great Britain and Ireland.” Indeed, as early as 1882, those Kensington ⇒ Read More

Cast Iron Architecture

Over a period of four decades, from 1840 through 1880, a commercial district of distinctive cast iron buildings developed in Center City Philadelphia. Born of the iron wealth of Pennsylvania and fashioned by the city’s architects and mechanics at a time of technological innovation, these buildings helped define the downtown of the emerging modern city. ⇒ Read More

Centennial Exhibition (1876)

The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine, more simply known as “the Centennial,” opened in Fairmount Park to great fanfare on May 10, 1876, and closed with equal flourish six months later. Modeled after the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition in London in 1851, and the first in a long ⇒ Read More

Chemical Industry

Since the eighteenth century, chemical or chemical processing industries have been an important part of the economy of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley region and have reflected larger trends in the industry. The earliest chemical companies manufactured products such as sulfuric acid and white lead pigments for local consumption, while other manufacturers, such as tanners, ⇒ Read More

Chemistry

Philadelphians used chemistry to enhance manufacturing, household practice, and artisan trades, mixing scholarly with practical aims from the outset. Furthermore, chemistry’s relationship to other scientific disciplines, including botany, geology, and medicine, made Philadelphians particularly keen to promote and diffuse chemical knowledge. Encouraged by widespread interest in chemistry between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, a number ⇒ Read More

Chester, Pennsylvania

Located 30 miles down the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the small but once industrially mighty city of Chester emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century as but a shadow of its former prominence in the county and the region. The municipality’s fortunes shifted many times over the 334 years of its existence, evolving ⇒ Read More

Chinatown

Settled by Chinese migrants in the 1870s, Philadelphia’s Chinatown grew over the course of the twentieth century from a small ethnic enclave on the outskirts of Skid Row to a vibrant family community in the heart of Center City. Threatened by urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, Chinatown residents marshaled the redevelopment process to ⇒ Read More

Clocks and Clockmakers

Clockmaking in colonial and early republican Philadelphia and its environs was considered an intellectual profession requiring great artisanal skill and scientific knowledge. Among rural communities surrounding the city, the mathematical precision and mechanical intricacy of the profession put it at a superior rank to the crafts of blacksmithing and carpentry. Clockmakers like David Rittenhouse (1732-96) ⇒ Read More

Co-Working Spaces

In the 2000s and 2010s, nearly thirty co-working spaces opened in the Philadelphia area. Co-working offered flexible, shared office facilities to freelancers, technology start-ups, entrepreneurs, and nascent businesses that did not require or could not afford private workplaces. These spaces were designed to foster a collaborative atmosphere, where clients could share innovations and resources. A ⇒ Read More

Coal

In the nineteenth century, Philadelphia banks and entrepreneurs played a pivotal role in facilitating the emergence of coal as the nation’s principal energy source for industry, transportation, and heating, by creating and financing the firms that first brought to market anthracite coal, mined exclusively in rugged eastern Pennsylvania. To mine anthracite, or “hard coal,” on ⇒ Read More

Commercial Museum

Opened to the public in 1897, the Commercial Museum was the foremost source of international trade knowledge for American manufacturers at the turn of the twentieth century. Located on the western bank of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, the museum served as a reference library for merchants, facilitated connections between American export traders and foreign ⇒ Read More

Contractor Bosses (1880s to 1930s)

As Philadelphia expanded physically after its 1854 consolidation of city and county, building contractors wielded a greater degree of political power as they paid politicians and civil servants handsomely for the rights to construct the city’s infrastructure. The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of the “contractor boss”—a construction magnate who wielded political power directly ⇒ Read More

Cordwainers Trial of 1806

Shoemaking, one of the most lucrative trades in Philadelphia during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, also proved to be one of the most contentious. Dissension within the trade worsened in the last decade of the eighteenth century and climaxed with the Philadelphia Cordwainers (shoemakers) Trial of 1806. This trial proved to be not only ⇒ Read More

Deindustrialization

The Philadelphia region’s long-held reputation as the “workshop of the world,” though richly deserved, did not prevent it from suffering the same loss of manufacturing firms and jobs that devastated the economies of other manufacturing centers. Local products ranged widely, from locomotives and ships to silk hosiery, wool carpets, machine tools, hand tools, lighting fixtures, ⇒ Read More

Delaware Avenue (Columbus Boulevard)

Delaware Avenue, the north-south thoroughfare closest to the Delaware River in Philadelphia, owes its existence to the richest man in America, who wanted a grand avenue along the central waterfront. The street, including a portion renamed Columbus Boulevard in the 1990s, played a significant role in the development of Philadelphia’s maritime activity, particularly food distribution ⇒ Read More

Dentistry and Dentists

As dentistry slowly emerged as a profession in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, innovative dentists in Philadelphia helped to shape dental care, procedures, and tools. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, dental colleges, journals, and societies contributed to the expansion of dental training and practice, which gradually but increasingly became accessible to women and people of ⇒ Read More

Dream Garden (The)

The Dream Garden, a glass mosaic designed by Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966) measuring fifteen feet in height and forty-nine feet in length, caused a public sensation twice in Philadelphia’s history. The first time was in 1916 when it was installed in the foyer of the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, six months after a national debut ⇒ Read More

Duffy’s Cut

At Duffy’s Cut, a railroad construction site in Chester County, Pennsylvania, fifty-seven Irish immigrant railroad workers died amid a cholera epidemic in the summer of 1832 and were buried in a mass grave. The Irishmen from Donegal, Tyrone, and Derry were hired to dig a railroad cut and construct an earthen fill in lieu of ⇒ Read More

Elfreth’s Alley

Nestled between Second Street and the Delaware River, thirty-two Federal and Georgian residences stand as reminders of the early days of Philadelphia. Elfreth’s Alley exists today as a residential street, historic landmark, and interpreted site labeled the “Nation’s Oldest Residential Street.” The heroic efforts of residents and local historians from the 1930s to 1960s preserved ⇒ Read More

ENIAC

Developed in Philadelphia during World War II, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) made history as the world’s first general-purpose, nonmechanical computer. Unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering in 1946, the ENIAC consisted of 40 nine-foot-high cabinets containing 18,000 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches, and 1,500 relays. Unlike ⇒ Read More

Enterprise Zones and Empowerment Zones

Introduced in the Philadelphia area and the nation in the early 1980s, the enterprise zone was a new kind of urban policy that emphasized market-based, “supply-side” strategies for tackling urban decline, most notably in the form of tax incentives for business. A variation in the 1990s, the empowerment zone, targeted areas of high poverty and ⇒ Read More

Flaxseed and Linen

In the colonial era linen and flaxseed were fundamental to the mercantile life of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. Philadelphia’s linen and flaxseed market extended from the farthest point of settlement, Fort Pitt, to the fields of England and Ireland. Traveling in a circle of trade across the north Atlantic, these goods forged relationships among ⇒ Read More

Flour Milling

At the time the first European colonists settled in the Delaware Valley, few places in the world were as well-suited to the cultivation of grains. The region’s generous rainfall, mild climate, and rich limestone soils provided the perfect environment for planting wheat, the most desirable and profitable grain in the world. By 1750 the Delaware ⇒ Read More

Food Processing

The food industry has always held a special place in Philadelphia and its surrounding region, though it never became a center of a massive industry like meatpacking in Chicago. Still, the methods of processing food at different periods and the people who did the work tell much about the state of Philadelphia’s economy and its ⇒ Read More

Franklin Institute

On February 5, 1824, a group of Philadelphians led by Samuel Vaughn Merrick (1801–70) and William Hypolitus Keating (1799–1840) met at the courthouse on Sixth and Chestnut Streets to found the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. Seeking to emulate a passion for useful science, in the ⇒ Read More

Furnituremaking

From the founding of Philadelphia in 1682 until the late 1800s, a vibrant community of cabinetmakers plied their skills alongside specialists in carving, chair making, and turning. Others who worked with wood included carpenters, coopers, shipwrights, and wheelwrights. These tradesmen were as diverse as the city itself, and their complex webs of language, ethnicity, religious ⇒ Read More

General Strike of 1910

On March 5, 1910, between 60,000 and 75,000 workers complied with the Central Federated Union’s call for a general strike in solidarity with the striking streetcar workers employed by Philadelphia’s Rapid Transit Company (RTC). Business and political elites feared that the strike would spread to other parts of Pennsylvania and to cities where workers had ⇒ Read More

General Trades Union Strike (1835)

The first general strike in the United States occurred in Philadelphia in 1835 when the short-lived General Trades’ Union (GTU) of the City and County of Philadelphia led a citywide general strike to demand a ten-hour workday. The successful action set a precedent followed by other labor organizations in the nation later in the nineteenth ⇒ Read More

Great Depression

The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1941, was characterized in both the Philadelphia region and the nation by a severe contraction in all levels of economic activity, massive unemployment, widespread bank failures, and sharp price deflation. Many people lost their life savings and their homes. Untold thousands went hungry; some starved. It led ⇒ Read More

Gunpowder Industry

The Mid-Atlantic gunpowder industry flourished in the nineteenth century along the Brandywine River in Delaware and spread into Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other states. Long synonymous with the name duPont, the industry began in 1802 when Eleuthère Irénée duPont (1771–1834), a French refugee and former student of famous chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94), began manufacturing gunpowder ⇒ Read More

Helicopters

From barns and airfields throughout the Delaware Valley, during the twentieth century innovative individuals and local companies made greater Philadelphia the nation’s cradle of rotary-wing aviation. They successfully launched autogiros, gyroplanes, and helicopters, and the Boeing Company paired with Bell Helicopters in Buffalo, New York, to produce the world’s first production tilt-rotor aircraft, the V-22 ⇒ Read More

Hog Island

Hog Island, at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, exemplifies many broad trends in the environmental history of the region. Once improved for agriculture, the natural landscape ultimately deteriorated through overexploitation, leading to its conversion for industrial, commercial, and other forms of development. No longer productive in the early twentieth century, the island ⇒ Read More

Horses

Horses played a critical role in Philadelphia’s growth and development as an industrial city, but over time their role as prime movers gradually diminished, and after the mid-twentieth century their role was primarily recreational. Although horses have become associated with the countryside or the American West, American cities had large, concentrated populations of horses well ⇒ Read More

Immigration (1790-1860)

The revival of immigration to Philadelphia and its surrounding region in the early nineteenth century provided one of the most powerful elements in reshaping the city’s society. After a decline in immigration during the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, the growing industrialization of the Philadelphia region began to attract streams of ⇒ Read More

Immigration (1870-1930)

During the national explosion of immigration that took place between 1870 and the 1920s, the Philadelphia region became more diverse and cosmopolitan as it was energized by immigrants who indelibly changed the character of the places where they settled. With its reputation as the “Workshop of the World,” Philadelphia attracted immigrants to jobs in industry, ⇒ Read More

Immigration (1930-Present)

For most of the decades since the United States’ immigration restriction acts of the 1920s, Philadelphia was not a major destination for immigrants, but at the end of the twentieth century the region re-emerged as a significant gateway. Beginning with changes in U.S. law in 1965 and accelerating by the 1990s, immigration added large, diverse ⇒ Read More

Industrial Neighborhoods

The growth and decline of industry in the Philadelphia region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also shaped the character of many of its neighborhoods. Compact industrial neighborhoods originated at a time when the lack of public transportation made it necessary for workers to live within walking distance of the factories. These row house blocks ⇒ Read More

Industrial Workers of the World

In the early 1900s thousands in greater Philadelphia belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—a militant, leftist labor union. Local 8, which organized the city’s longshoremen, was the largest and most powerful IWW branch in the Mid-Atlantic and the IWW’s most racially inclusive branch. Indeed, there might not have been a more egalitarian ⇒ Read More

Inner Suburbs

Presenting a varied and complicated patchwork of both thriving and distressed communities, Philadelphia’s inner suburbs developed during different eras to serve different purposes and populations. European influence predated the Revolutionary War with English, Swedish, Dutch, and Welsh settlers establishing tight-knit farming communities in what were then outlying areas of William Penn’s Philadelphia. During the eighteenth ⇒ Read More

Insurance

Insurance is sometimes called an “invisible” element of commerce, but in Philadelphia, it has never been far from view. From the eighteenth century through the twenty-first, Philadelphia’s leadership in the field of insurance has enhanced the city’s preeminence in many types of commercial and communal endeavor. Insurance in Philadelphia, over the years, has meant everything ⇒ Read More

Iron Production

Long before western Pennsylvania dominated the American iron and steel industries, southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey became the epicenter of colonial iron production. In a little over forty years beginning in 1716, Pennsylvania ironmasters erected nearly fifty furnaces and forges for producing iron stock and goods, and by 1840 the region’s national preeminence had ⇒ Read More

Knights of Labor

The Knights of Labor, the first national industrial union in the United States, was founded in Philadelphia on December 9, 1869, by Uriah Stephens (1821-82) and eight other Philadelphia garment cutters. Intended to overcome the limitations of craft unions, the organization was designed to include all those who toiled with their hands. By mid-1886 nearly ⇒ Read More

Korean War

Although active hostilities during the Korean War lasted for little more than three years (1950-53), the conflict had a lasting impact on the Philadelphia area. The war provided a boost for the shipbuilding industry on both sides of the Delaware River, and military bases played a major role in preparing soldiers and supplies for deployment. ⇒ Read More

Labor Day

Labor Day, celebrated the first Monday of September, has been observed in the Philadelphia region since the 1880s, before it became a nationwide holiday. New Jersey was one of the first states to grant Labor Day legal status in 1887, and Pennsylvania followed suit by the end of the decade. The earliest incarnations of Labor ⇒ Read More

Locomotive Manufacturing

For over one hundred and twenty years, railway locomotives were built in Greater Philadelphia. From the pioneering manufacturers of steam locomotives in the Spring Garden section of the city in the 1830s to the sprawling plant of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Delaware County in the twentieth century, the products, the companies, and the buildings ⇒ Read More

Manufacturing Suburbs

Although early industrialization in the eighteenth century took root mainly in urban centers, a substantial share of the Philadelphia region’s early manufacturing sprang up in small towns outside the young city. The explanation for that pattern lay in the region’s great rivers, the Delaware and Schuylkill. As early as the eighteenth century, enterprising settlers saw ⇒ Read More

Maps and Mapmaking

As the country’s largest city, and for a time capital of the new nation, Philadelphia was well situated to chart the young republic’s changing geography. Using its capacity to attract all the manufacturing elements necessary for successful publishing—printers binders, colorists, engravers and others—Philadelphia became the home of the nation’s first full-time geographical publisher and soon ⇒ Read More

March of the Mill Children

The March of the Mill Children, the three-week trek from Philadelphia to New York by striking child and adult textile workers launched on July 7, 1903, by Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (1837-1930), trained public attention on the scourge of child labor and energized efforts to end it by law. Jones, the storied Irish-born labor organizer, ⇒ Read More

Norristown, Pennsylvania

Founded in 1784 as the county seat of Montgomery County, Norristown sits on three hills that slope down to the Schuylkill River fifteen miles northwest of Center City Philadelphia. Its riverfront location and abundant waterpower helped the town prosper throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth. In the second half of the twentieth ⇒ Read More

Office Buildings

Greater Philadelphia’s office buildings reflect the aspirations of individuals, companies, and municipalities. Once clustered in cities and later spreading to suburbs throughout the metropolitan area, office buildings have mirrored changing architectural styles and economic patterns. While many celebrated office buildings have been demolished, others (new, restored, or adapted) stand as integral features of the built ⇒ Read More

Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC)

In the 1960s, after leading protest campaigns to expose discriminatory hiring and open thousands of jobs to African Americans, the Reverend Leon Sullivan (1922-2001) founded the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC), a vocational, educational, and life skills training program designed to prepare young men and women for full-time employment. Moving beyond protest to address the barriers ⇒ Read More

Paints and Varnishes

From colonial times to the nationwide deindustrialization trend starting in the 1950s, Philadelphia played a leading role in providing American and overseas markets with quality paints and varnishes. “Oil and Colours” merchants of the colonial period turned, during the early nineteenth century, into family-owned-and-managed manufacturing companies, as they opened paint and varnish factories in Center ⇒ Read More

Petty Island

Petty Island, part of Pennsauken, New Jersey, in the Delaware River opposite the Kensington section of Philadelphia, played a significant supporting role in the economic development of the region. Also known as “Pettys” or “Petty’s” Island, over time it served as a place where people hunted, fished, gathered herbs, farmed, built and repaired boats, operated ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Board of Trade

Philadelphia’s Board of Trade worked for more than a century to promote commercial development in the city and the region while also arbitrating disputes among its member businesses. Formed in 1833, the board filled unmet needs for economic development and became the largest organization of its type in the nation. The original concept for the ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC)

The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), a nonprofit corporation controlled jointly by the city government and the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, formed in 1958 to support existing businesses and attract new ones by offering land and low-cost financing for both for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. To accomplish this mission, PIDC manages the oldest municipal land ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Plan

Even as it underwent a painful process of economic restructuring in the years after World War II, Philadelphia garnered national attention from efforts to integrate historically white building trades. Dubbed the “Philadelphia Plan,” the program requiring federal contractors to practice nondiscrimination in hiring tested the liberal coalition formed in the aftermath of the New Deal ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Stock Exchange

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange played an influential role in America’s financial and economic development. It helped the fledgling nation raise funds to develop infrastructure for a growing industrial base and new commercial banks and insurance companies. The Exchange is the nation’s oldest, founded two years before the New York Stock Exchange, and third-oldest globally, after ⇒ Read More

Pipelines

Reaching hundreds of miles to the Philadelphia area from western Pennsylvania, pipelines carrying oil and gas were critical to Philadelphia’s emergence as an industrial power and linked the fates of suppliers and consumers for more than 160 years. The development of the pipelines, marked by both challenge and innovation, supplied energy for residential and business ⇒ Read More

Printing and Publishing

From the late seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century, Philadelphia’s printing and publishing industry was a central component of the city’s evolution from “Green Country Town” to “Cradle of Liberty” to “Workshop of the World.” Growing their operations from small do-it-all shops into large fully mechanized publishing houses, Philadelphia’s printers and publishers capitalized on the ⇒ Read More

Printmaking

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Philadelphia became a leading center of printmaking in the United States. While publishing companies had operated in the city since the eighteenth century, the technological innovations of the firm of Peter S. Duval (1804/5-86) transformed Philadelphia’s lithographic trade into a booming industry. Duval’s commitment to improving printmaking methods and achieving ⇒ Read More

Radio (Commercial)

From radio’s inception to contemporary times, Philadelphia-area innovators, performers, and manufacturers contributed to shaping the industry. Like its technological forerunner, the telegraph, radio made possible the direct, real-time transmission of information. The immediacy and intimacy of radio waves arriving directly into listeners’ homes made radio revolutionary. The medium quickly became not only a technology for ⇒ Read More

Railroad Strike of 1877

The first nationwide strike in the United States occurred in the summer of 1877 as rail workers and their supporters throughout the nation protested conditions under corporate control. While Philadelphia largely escaped the turmoil that erupted in other cities as authorities worked vigorously to quash labor opposition, the city’s National Guard regiment nonetheless became entangled ⇒ Read More

Railroads

The history of the railroad industry in the United States and the growth of the Greater Philadelphia region are inextricably linked. Philadelphia money and engineering built the national network and, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, railroads helped make and maintain Philadelphia as a “Workshop of the World,” ⇒ Read More

Recording Industry

The birthplace of the American “record” industry, the Philadelphia region for more than a century has been home to a thriving industry of recording studios and record companies. In Camden, New Jersey, the Victor Company in the early 1900s was the nation’s largest manufacturer of musical recordings. Since then, Philadelphia’s unique concentration of diversified industries, ⇒ Read More

Refineries (Oil)

Philadelphia emerged as a petroleum hub in the second half of the nineteenth century. As an industrialized port city with global networks and extensive unbuilt land available on the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, the city offered the necessary rail and water infrastructure as well as access to water for the new industry. Extensive construction of ⇒ Read More

Restaurants

From colonial-era taverns to the celebrity chef establishments of the early twenty-first century, Greater Philadelphia’s restaurants illuminated the region’s socioeconomic, cultural, and culinary trends while also providing sustenance for millions, employing thousands, and in some cases emerging as historic and nostalgic treasures. Taverns and public houses (“pubs”) represented the area’s earliest food-serving establishments; many operated ⇒ Read More

Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post, one of the oldest magazines in the United States, originated in Philadelphia in 1821 as a four-page weekly newspaper printed on the same equipment as Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. After switching to a magazine format in 1870, the Post grew in the twentieth century to reach more than a million readers ⇒ Read More

Schuylkill Navigation Company

While eighteenth-century Philadelphians looked almost exclusively to the east and the Delaware River to connect them to the wider world, by the turn of the nineteenth century they looked increasingly to the Schuylkill River and the west. After several failed attempts to fund improvements that would make the rapid-filled Schuylkill River navigable in the 1780s ⇒ Read More

Scientific Management

The “Scientific Management” movement was born in early twentieth-century Philadelphia factories but spread rapidly, transforming not only management techniques but also popular conceptions of industrialized society itself. According to its founders, the system simply sought the “one best way” to perform any task. But its time-study engineers, along with the assembly line, came to symbolize ⇒ Read More

Shipbuilding and Shipyards

Perhaps no business, industry, or institution illuminates the history of the Greater Philadelphia region from the seventeenth century to the present day more clearly than shipbuilding and shipyards. This may seem surprising since Philadelphia and nearby Delaware riverfront ports lie one hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean up an often treacherous Delaware Bay and river ⇒ Read More

Shirtwaist Strike (1909-10)

On December 20, 1909, more than 7,000 of Philadelphia’s 12,000 shirtwaist workers walked out on their jobs, one month after the “uprising of 20,000” commenced in New York City’s shirtwaist industry. The strike lasted until February 6, 1910, when manufacturers agreed to comply with workers’ demands (though ultimately refused union recognition). Occurring in an era ⇒ Read More

Shoemakers and Shoemaking

One of Philadelphia’s oldest occupations, shoemaking grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to become one of the city’s leading industries. During that period shoemakers in Philadelphia also became some of the leading figures in the city’s, and the nation’s, burgeoning labor movement. The methods and institutions that these leaders used throughout the nineteenth century ⇒ Read More

Shopping Centers

Shopping centers, which bound retailers together into one physically convenient and accessible commercial venue for suburban consumers, profoundly altered Greater Philadelphia, redefining the region’s socioeconomic dimensions and destabilizing the city’s old, commercial core, the Central Business District. Commercial retailing also underwent significant changes, as the location, planning, and physical proportions of shopping facilities dramatically transformed ⇒ Read More

Single Tax Movement

During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Philadelphia helped give birth to the single tax movement, one of the country’s more influential, if less well-remembered, reform movements. The idea of a “single tax” on the unimproved value of land, rather than on productive activities, was popularized by Henry George (1839-97), a native of Philadelphia. The ⇒ Read More

Slinky

Invented by accident in a Philadelphia shipyard, the Slinky is a stack of coiled metal that becomes a bit of oscillating magic, a moving, traveling toy perfect for flipping head-over-heels to “walk” down stairs. Always made in Pennsylvania, the Slinky became standard-issue equipment for generations of American children and a familiar, fun plaything for grown-ups ⇒ Read More

Southwest Philadelphia

Southwest Philadelphia, which along with adjacent Tinicum Township, Delaware County, is the location of the Philadelphia International Airport, greets many visitors to the city. Yet, Southwest Philadelphia, often described as “far” Southwest, is quite possibly the least-known area of the city, even to Philadelphians. Kingsessing, as this vicinity was originally named, was the first section ⇒ Read More

Spanish-American War

Although often regarded as a minor conflict, the Spanish-American War (1898) made a major impact on Greater Philadelphia. As a populous urban center, Philadelphia and its immediate environs contributed a substantial number of troops to the United States’ volunteer army but also provided an outlet for those dissenters who decried warfare. In addition, the war ⇒ Read More

Sullivan Principles

The Global Sullivan Principles, launched in 1977 by Philadelphia civil rights leader Leon H. Sullivan (1922-2001), represent one of the twentieth century’s most powerful attempts to effect social justice through economic leverage. More a sustained movement than a static document, the principles sought to bring the power of American investment in South Africa to bear ⇒ Read More

Superfund Sites

As a region with a complex industrial history that generated numerous chemical, industrial, and landfill operations, by the late twentieth century Greater Philadelphia held some of the nation’s highest concentrations of environmentally hazardous “Superfund” sites. Named for the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), also known as “Superfund,” the designation ⇒ Read More

Tastykake

“Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tastykake” has been a brand tag line known by virtually every Philadelphian for a century. Indeed, few things are as iconically associated with the city and region as Tastykakes. The company was founded in 1914 by Philip J. Baur and Herbert T. Morris, in the Germantown neighborhood ⇒ Read More

Tobacco

Growing, trading in, and manufacturing tobacco were important components of the economy and society of the Delaware Valley for centuries. Early residents raised tobacco for personal use and as a trade commodity, but in most of the region it fell out of favor by the late eighteenth century. The exception was Southeast Pennsylvania, where tobacco ⇒ Read More

Toy Manufacturing

Philadelphia helped define the toy industry in the United States with simple yet engaging toys that became beloved by generations. Although social, cultural, and economic changes produced challenges for the industry, a few iconic toys stood the test of time and continued to promote imagination, creativity, and discovery for people of all ages. Philadelphia’s first ⇒ Read More

Trade Unions (1820s and 1830s)

As industrialization began changing the nature of work and society in the United States during the 1820s and 1830s, workers concerned with their low wages, long hours, and the growing power of employers organized to fight for what they believed to be the true ideals of the republic. During this period, Philadelphia workers organized trade ⇒ Read More

Walking Encyclopedia: Harrowgate

Like many neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Harrowgate, located just northwest of Kensington, experienced dramatic changes as a result of the industrial boom in the nineteenth century. Prior to industrialization, Harrowgate was a small community built around medicinal springs and attracted only the wealthiest of Philadelphia’s citizens. Industrialization, however, transformed Harrowgate. By the late nineteenth century, Harrowgate ⇒ Read More

Woodbury, New Jersey

Located on the Woodbury Creek in the northwestern part of Gloucester County, Woodbury formed as a result of the first Quaker family to settle the area, in 1683. Initially a lightly populated farming community, the village eventually became the seat of Gloucester County and over time emerged as an important center for transportation, manufacturing, and ⇒ Read More

World War I

Although the United States’ military involvement in the First World War lasted just over a year, the conflict in Europe had a lasting impact on the Philadelphia region. The war created new opportunities for the industrial base of Philadelphia, Chester, and Camden, and as men and women enlisted for military service, the region developed a ⇒ Read More

World War II

World War II, which created change for industries, populations, and politics in many urban areas in the United States, had a transforming effect on the Philadelphia region. Already industrialized, the region gained new impetus from government orders for supplies, armaments, transportation, and more. Philadelphia-area industries expanded, making the region a major “arsenal for democracy” during ⇒ Read More

Gallery: Work, Commerce, and the Economy

Shipbuilding: Shipbuilding

Library of Congress (Explore in Shipbuilding and Shipyards).
First Bank of the United States: First Bank of the United States

Library Company of Philadelphia (Explore in Banking).
Terence V. Powderly: Terence V. Powderly

Library of Congress (Explore in Knights of Labor).
Migrant Workers at Seabrook Farms: Migrant Workers at Seabrook Farms

Library of Congress (Explore in African American Migration and Food Processing).
Campbell Soup Factory Towers: Campbell Soup Factory Towers

Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries (Explore in Campbell Soup Company).
Federal Writers Project Protest: Federal Writers Project Protest

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Explore in Great Depression).
Homes for War Workers: Homes for War Workers

Library of Congress (Explore in World War II).
Oliver Evans’ Automated Mill: Oliver Evans’ Automated Mill

Library of Congress (Explore in Flour Milling).
Benjamin Harrison Fletcher: Benjamin Harrison Fletcher

Carlos Cortez, published with permission of Charles H. Kerr Press (Explore in Industrial Workers of the World).
Wetherill & Brother Advertisement: Wetherill & Brother Advertisement

Library Company of Philadelphia (Explore in Paints and Varnishes).
Early Recording Session: Early Recording Session

Camden County Historical Society (Explore in Recording Industry).
Leon Sullivan: Leon Sullivan

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Explore in Sullivan Principles).

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Timeline: Work, Commerce, and the Economy

Colonial Era: Colonial Era

1676: First shipyard opens on Delaware riverfront of future site of Philadelphia (founded 1682).

1680s-90s: Philadelphia becomes chief port on the Delaware River for Pennsylvania, West Jersey, and Delaware; older ports in New Castle, Chester, and Burlington become commercial satellites.

1690: First paper mill in America founded near Germantown by William Rittenhouse.

1694: Market stalls appear at Second and High Streets (later renamed Market Street).

1700s: Philadelphia becomes leading colonial shipbuilding center by 1750; other major industries include tanning, brewing, and distilling.

Labor in colonial era includes indentured workers and enslaved Africans.

Image credit: Historical Society of Pennsylvania
American Revolution to 1800: American Revolution to 1800

Philadelphia shipbuilders supply gunboats, floating batteries, and frigates for the Continental and U.S. Navy.

1776-81: Trade with Cuba intensifies during the war with Britain.

1786-87: Philadelphia begins trade with China.

1787: Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Useful Arts and Manufactures founded.

1788: On ratification of U.S. Constitution, Grand Federal Procession of crafts and manufactures displays vast range of Philadelphia’s productive activity.

1790s: Philadelphians and Spanish diplomats form alliances for trade with Cuba.

Image credit: Library of Congress
Nineteenth Century Before 1854: Nineteenth Century Before 1854

Major industries include shipbuilding, foundries, and production of machines (including printing presses and locomotives), textiles and apparel, boots and shoes, paper, books, leather, and cotton.

Sugar and cigar industries attract migration from Cuba and Puerto Rico.

1801: Philadelphia Navy Yard opens.

1820s-1830s: Manayunk (shown here) develops as town of textile mills.

1824: Franklin Institute founded to promote “the mechanic arts.”

1825: Completion of Schuylkill Canal allows transportation of anthracite coal from northeast Pennsylvania to wharves on Schuylkill for export.

Image credit: Library Company of Philadelphia
Nineteenth Century Before 1854: Nineteenth Century Before 1854

1827: American labor movement originates with Mechanics Union of Trade Associations.

1833: Board of Trade founded to promote business and industrial development.

1835: General Trades’ Union strike seeks ten-hour work day.

1842: Branch line of railroad connecting Philadelphia and Pottsville diverts coal shipping from the Schuylkill to the Delaware River at Port Richmond.

1846: Pennsylvania Railroad incorporated; completed to Pittsburgh, 1854.

1847: George Lippard establishes Brotherhood of the Union, militant labor organization.

Image credit: Library Company of Philadelphia
Nineteenth Century After 1854: Nineteenth Century After 1854

Major industries include textiles, locomotive manufacturing, shipbuilding, iron and steel production, sugar refining, and oil refining.

1860: With discovery of petroleum in western Pennsylvania, Philadelphia becomes oil storage and refining center.

1861-64: During Civil War, manufacturers supply Union with uniforms, munitions, and warships.

1869: Knights of Labor founded in Philadelphia.

1876: Centennial Exhibition.

1870s-80s: Baptist Temple’s night school for working men becomes Temple University (chartered 1888).

1870s-90s: Market Street department stores, led by John Wanamaker, become national models.

Image credit: Library of Congress
Twentieth Century to 1945: Twentieth Century to 1945

Philadelphia becomes known as “Workshop of the World,” although rate of industrial growth declines. Major industries include textiles, food and food products, printing and publishing, metal products, and leather goods.

1903: March of the Mill Children.

1914-18: Labor needs during First World War attract African American migrants from the South; shipbuilding and other manufacturing increase.

1920s: Knitting and lace plants open in suburbs, some relocating from Philadelphia. Textile industry booms, then contracts during Depression.

1929: Baldwin Locomotive moves production from Philadelphia to Eddystone, Delaware County.

1941-45: Region’s industries become an “arsenal of democracy” during World War II.

Image credit: Library of Congress
Twentieth Century After 1945: Twentieth Century After 1945

Manufacturing plummets as Northeast loses factories and jobs to the Sunbelt and international competitors. By end of century, region’s major employers include health care, pharmaceuticals, business services, education, and government.

1948: Business leaders form Greater Philadelphia Movement to spur economic revitalization.

1950s: Textile industry hit by product changes, from silk to nylon for hosiery and from wool to nylon and other synthetics for carpets. Clothing industry also begins decline.

1958: Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation founded.

1960s-80s: Region’s local department stores decline; many are acquired by national chains such as Macy’s.

Image credit: PhillyHistory.org
Twentieth Century After 1945: Twentieth Century After 1945

1960s-90s: Major shipyards close (New York Ship in 1967, Penn Ship in 1989, Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1996).

1963: University City Science Center founded.

1976: Federal Historic Tax Credit program spurs redevelopment of industrial buildings into residential apartments in neighborhoods such as Old City Philadelphia (pictured here).

1983-98: Philadelphia loses its place as a commercial banking headquarters through mergers and acquisitions.

1994: Philadelphia and Camden designated as bi-state Urban Empowerment Zone, sharing $100 million in federal aid for economic development.

Image credit: PhillyHistory.org
Twenty-First Century: Twenty-First Century

Co-working spaces and business incubators such as Indy Hall in Philadelphia and South Jersey Technology Park at Rowan University encourage entrepreneurship.

2000: Philadelphia Navy Yard acquired by Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development; redeveloped as business campus for industry, offices, and research and development.

2013: Government, health care, and higher education sectors are the region’s dominant employers (University of Pennsylvania pictured here). In city of Philadelphia, largest private employers other than education and health care are USAirways, Comcast, and Allied Barton Security Services.

Image credit: J. Fusco for Visit Philadelphia

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Map: Work, Commerce, and the Economy

Links & Related Reading: Work, Commerce, and the Economy

Collections

Hagley Library, 200 Hagley Road, Wilmington, Del.

Urban Archives, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia.