CHAPTER 1

POWER

Not long after the Civil War, in the crucible of the Industrial Revolution, new ways of creating power were in high demand. Following Thomas Edison’s lead, several eager young electric companies sprang up in Philadelphia. Most of them failed or were bought out by others before the turn of the twentieth century. The Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) was essentially a consolidation of what remained of these companies. Backed by the city’s biggest banking firms, PECO eventually became a monopoly, but not without years of legal fights and personal vendettas with other utility and holding companies, such as the United Gas Improvement Company (UGI). Although at first many Philadelphians distrusted and openly feared the new technology, PECO became the longest-standing (and most profitable) utility company in Philadelphia history.

As large, influential corporations often did (and still do), PECO has had its share of scandals and power trips. Its varied leadership showed both honesty and crookedness, determination and passivity. But its presence in Philadelphia was always an overwhelming one. The company can, however, be credited with transforming the city’s rambling, pre-industrial grid into the powerhouse it became in the early twentieth century. By monopolizing the electrical power industry, PECO—on its own quest for electrical domination—actually strengthened the torque of much of the city’s manufacturing drivetrain in the process and revved the engines of Philly’s industries for the whole world to see. Today, Philadelphia’s love/hate relationship with PECO has never been stronger. Although no longer a monopoly, the company continues to serve well the industries and communities of southeastern Pennsylvania. This chapter will focus on the impact PECO had on Philadelphia, as well as the landmarks it left behind.

The undeniable presence of Philadelphia Electric Company’s hulking Delaware Station is clear in this aerial photo. The coal receiving tower at the foot of its pier constantly fed the station from the daily traffic of supply barges.

Philadelphia Electric Company’s Riverside Generating Stations

THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY exploded in Philadelphia at an interesting time in its history. The second and third decades of the twentieth century presented Americans with the simultaneous, polarizing forces of decadence and altruism. Prohibition divided the country and created organized crime. But at the same time, dazzling new technological wonders kept American entrepreneurialism alive. The economy was a very tall house of cards; those who lived at the top had lovely views, but they had taken real financial risks to get there. Within these two decades, Philadelphians experienced a roller coaster ride of change and turmoil. Although the Philadelphia Electric Company became a monopoly and, along with other utility companies, dominated the region politically and economically, it also created some of the most elaborate and technologically advanced generating stations then in existence on the planet.

When a passerby on Interstate 95 or a visitor to Penn Treaty Park eyes the giant “Greek temple with smokestacks” at the edge of the Delaware River in Philadelphia’s Fishtown section, they often do not even realize what it is. According to one Penn Treaty Park visitor, it’s “umm, a museum or something.” From the ground, the massive structure easily resembles a museum or similar public building. But this museum has been closed for quite a long time. In fact, sitting just feet from the site of William Penn’s famous treaty with the Leni-Lenape Indians, PECO’s Delaware Generating Station is something of a museum—a concrete and steel memorial to ingenious engineering, to American determination in response to demand and to the Gilded Age of lawless bureaucracy.

The coal-powered generating stations built by PECO after the First World War exhibit a strong sense of permanence and industrial dominance. Their designers—John T. Windrim and William C.L. Elgin—clearly did not foresee a time when PECO’s political or financial roots would ever dry up or that a new way of producing such massive electrical current would ever be discovered. The intricate process of blending physics, mechanical and electrical science, feasibility of operation and sheer size into a method of creating and maintaining a constant flow of enough electrical current to power entire neighborhoods is difficult to comprehend by most even today. But the process of successfully designing, engineering and constructing that new science into a physical reality is almost mind-boggling.

Soon after PECO had conquered its early opponents and gained some political and financial clout, its first industrial-sized generating station was erected. Situated on the east bank of the Schuylkill River at Christian Street, the Schuylkill Generating Station (today called the Christian Street Substation) was built in 1899 to feed the western portion of center city and the growing neighborhoods of South Philadelphia. Its two turbines proved under capacity in just a few years. The future of power was clear, and it was going to be expensive. By today’s standards, the ridiculous size of the structures that needed to be constructed around every major metropolitan area would be completely unfeasible. But at a time when natural gas was the preferred method of lighting, PECO’s intimidating new product was a hard sell to a hard-nosed, contented Philadelphia. The daring company’s bold idea was to lure the weary public in by erecting large, purposeful utilitarian buildings to display a sense of surety and permanence.

Meanwhile, the United Gas Improvement Company (UGI), which had control of nearly all of the city’s natural gas supply, was growing in size as it, too, absorbed dozens of its small competitors. The outspoken founders of UGI had enjoyed an unchallenged reign over the city’s heat and lighting contracts. They were mostly members of the “City Hall Gang”—the corrupt Republican political faction that ran city government in the early twentieth century—and they definitely saw PECO as a threat to their utility monopoly. The Gang was an unstoppable political force, reaching into almost every department of city and state government. Although PECO’s board of trustees also contained many of UGI’s board members, PECO appeared, at least from a historical perspective, to be the underdog. The same members of Philadelphia’s corrupt elite would have their turn at the helm of both monopolies, and the natural progression of the city’s political system would deliver good and bad leaders to both. At its early development, UGI had the financial backing of Philadelphia business barons Peter Widener, William Elkins, Thomas Dolan and Jeremiah Sullivan; it was hard to say no to it or them.

Under its first president, Joseph B. McCall, PECO got off to a remarkable head start. McCall was a known opponent of the Gang and did battle with the old powers to earn his reputation. He was not, however, without his share of instigation or muckraking. In 1904, for example, a political hurdle came at PECO when the company reached the stage of its progression in which it needed to establish a delivery system of power lines. Prohibited by the Gang to dig its own conduit trenches and install its own lines, PECO would be forced to subcontract the work out to another Gang-controlled firm and pay almost twice as much for the work. But it was the only “legal” way.

The well-established, Gang-affiliated Keystone Telephone Company, meanwhile, owned 10 million feet of underground conduit, which carried its lines. The president of Keystone was John Mack—a tough, wealthy, Gang-loyal colleague of McCall’s. McCall decided that it would be worth his while to attempt to gain friendly permission to lease or rent the use of Mack’s conduit. But when McCall inquired at Keystone about a meeting with Mack, he was met by his “representative,” none other than Philadelphia’s Republican Gang leader Israel W. Durham. To McCall’s advantage, an agreement was made with the “Boss of Philadelphia” wherein PECO would buy out all of Keystone’s conduit for $2.5 million. McCall agreed, and the deal went through, apparently without Mack’s knowledge or approval. Upon hearing of the deal, Mack claimed that he wanted $3 million for the conduit but quickly settled down after being humiliated in the courts by Durham’s judicial hierarchy. It is doubtful that Mack’s decision to sell off his business assets was by choice—or at least by his choice.

Delaware Station resembles a Greek temple with smokestacks. Upon its completion, it was hailed as the largest and most technologically innovative power plant in the world. At right, its ash chutes once filled two dozen rail cars daily with the station’s byproduct.

McCall was fire-branding his successful reputation into the ears of Philadelphia’s bigwigs. Working closely with PECO’s top industrial engineer, William C.L. Elgin, McCall brought the technical aspect of PECO’s operations to the forefront of its advertising. Between 1900 and 1907, the company’s total footage of high-tension cable tripled to 448,509, its underground conduit footage more than doubled to 6,885,847 and its customer base rose from 8,145 to 22,973. If there is one individual who can be credited with laying the framework for the rise of the Philadelphia Electric Company, it is surely Joseph B. McCall.

PECO’s official architect, John Torrey Windrim, was the son of famed Philadelphia architect James Hamilton Windrim, who had held several political designations in the city. The elder Windrim was the director of the departments of water, streets, gas, lighting, surveys and public works during his long career. He was also the official architect of Stephen Girard’s estate, designing several buildings at Girard College, as well as the lavish Masonic Temple at Broad and Filbert Streets. John obviously followed into his father’s profession, likely inheriting many of his contracts through James’s deep-rooted political clout. He designed some of the most iconic buildings in Philadelphia, as well as some of the most innovative industrial architecture in America. When James Windrim was appointed city architect in 1892, young John saw to the day-to-day operations of his father’s new office. Upon James’s death in 1919, John stepped up to fill his shoes. Windrim’s more popular work, such as the Franklin Institute Science Museum, still dazzles younger generations of Philadelphians today.

Windrim and Elgin labored together at a hurried pace, working around politics, economics and rival electrical companies. Their creativity, it would seem, did not suffer. A new layout and technique was imagined for Schuylkill Station’s new sister. It would be “the big one,” a palace of power that would be sufficient to provide for one of the city’s most populated areas—the textile and garment districts of Kensington and Northern Liberties. The Delaware Generating Station would introduce new mechanical and technological methods and set the standard for coal-burning power stations. It would also introduce an attractiveness and artistic merit to industrial design—with its turreted Greek Revival façade and its logo-embossed profile—creating a look not yet seen in utilitarian architecture. At the same time, the new flagship station would attempt to subliminally convey to the public a subtle notion of rock-solid integrity and modern progress, as if trying not to disturb the overly critical city.

About ten acres of land along the Delaware River, bordering Penn Treaty Park’s eastern edge, was purchased from the Neafie and Levy Shipyard in 1912. Neafie and Levy had for a century been building ships at the site. Several hundred wooden ships were built there, including the cruisers St. Louis and Denver and torpedo boats Chauncy Barry and Bainbridge. The location of the old ship works provided easy access to a steady supply of coal via river barges as well as existing rail. Work on the Delaware Generating Station—named for the river that fed it—began in 1917. It was halted, however, after only a few months due to material shortages caused by the First World War. The site was closely guarded throughout 1918 due to fears of a German attack. Construction eagerly continued in 1919, hurried by the pressures of an intense postwar industrial boom.

The Stone & Webster Company—one of the world’s greatest industrial construction and engineering firms—was granted the contract for construction. It began the work by excavating the ground almost twenty feet down, through layers of mica schist, to bedrock. The bedrock was found to meet the necessary support standards of a mind-bending five to six tons per square foot. To drop the caissons below the bedrock as required, two ten-ton steel driving masts (in the shape of bullets)—repeatedly hoisted above the rock on cables and dropped onto a breakpoint—were used to break through the stone. The masts were also backed by the power of a steam hammer, which struck them just after each drop. Pumps then had to be put in place to keep out the constantly flowing groundwater.

Original building plans called for the use of brick and terra cotta, but war shortages and a huge cost reduction led to the use of concrete instead—lots of concrete. In fact, upon the building’s completion, after using up more than fifty-thousand cubic yards of concrete, it was hailed by Stone & Webster as the largest concrete power plant in the world. Pour-in-place concrete required the erection of wooden casing to hold it in place while it dried, and a building this big required—as estimated by Stone & Webster—1,125,000 square feet of concrete form casing. The Stone & Webster Journal reported that the total number of men employed in the construction of the Delaware Generating Station was 2,345. According to the same report, the construction required the use of 850 carpenters, 250 electricians, 125 pipe-fitters, 550 laborers, 170 pile-drivers, 190 steel workers and 210 miscellaneous workers.

The station consists of two original units, the older being the southern unit fronting Penn Treaty Park. It contained turbines one and two (two smokestacks per turbine) and was capable of churning out 60,000 kilowatts of electricity per hour. Both turbines were in use and under load by December 1920. Almost immediately, work began on the second unit, containing turbines three and four. By 1923, all four 35,000-kilowatt turbines were in operation, putting out 120,000 kilowatts per hour. Of course, by then even more power was needed. However, acquiring additional financial backing proved easier with its new record for success, and PECO again moved to raise the bar on the electrical industry.

Windrim, again working closely with Elgin, produced a design for another new generating station. Following the growing residential city up the river, the site for the Richmond Generating Station—at the mouth of the Frankford Creek—was chosen to serve the growing north and northeast. Very aware of PECO’s higher budget, Windrim really outdid himself. The new plant and its many clever design highlights would not disappoint. Thinking forward to solve the problem of future capacity insufficiency, Windrim and Elgin designed the building in “linked units.” One unit included a set of two turbines and the appropriate supplements (the building made up two units). The units could easily be connected at the side to another set of units, and another, as the demand for power increased. An architect’s rendering shows Richmond’s linked unit plan—a virtual tripling of the current building, featuring two separate coal piers.

A portion of Delaware Station’s large green-tiled embossment—“The Philadelphia Electric Company”—acts as an appropriate subtitle for this 2006 photo. The concrete tower at left houses the plant’s central water reserve tank.

The same basic construction method used for Delaware Station was revamped for its larger sister, and Stone & Webster again undertook its construction. When placed into service on November 24, 1925, the Richmond Generating Station was already regarded as the largest and most innovative power plant in the world. Employing more than five hundred workers daily, the enormous, elegant power plant showed that Windrim and Elgin had perfected the style that had gotten its start with Delaware Station. The first two turbines were operating at a capacity of almost 200,000 kilowatts per hour. In 1926, Richmond received its third turbine, bringing the capacity to 250,000 kilowatts per hour. Meanwhile, company president Joseph B. McCall’s continuing health problems caused a reduction in his duties, which had already been limited almost to supervision.

In 1924, McCall was relieved of the presidency and named chairman of the board, a position he held until his death in January 1926. Succeeding McCall as president was his close friend and business associate Walter H. Johnson. Johnson climbed into the cockpit of a very powerful machine. Thanks to the work of McCall, the position of president came with some very important political and business connections already in place. Johnson recognized that McCall had taken the company to levels once thought impossible and was due much credit. At an annual board meeting in 1926, Johnson paid tribute to his late friend and mentor:

Joseph B. McCall, from whose monument—the Philadelphia Electric Company—invisible links stretch to almost every main industry and by far the greater number of hearthstones in the city he lived, was a businessman of genius and rare discernment. He was a pioneer in the great electrical industry that is revolutionizing the world, and one of the four or five outstanding executives of light and power companies serving American centers of population.

Under the years of McCall, the company took pride in the treatment of its employees, as well as its open-door financial policy with the public. Under Johnson, the company grew even more. By his third year as president, PECO’s customer base had gone up by almost 150,000 new households to 495,000. He also worked at getting the company’s new headquarters built. Still standing today as part of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, PECO’s office tower at Ninth and Sansom Streets is a handsome Art Deco skyscraper. The twenty-three-story building, officially known as the Edison Building, was designed by John Windrim. Opening in 1927, it was a sign to the city and the world that the Philadelphia Electric Company was here to stay.

Also under the guidance of Johnson, PECO erected the Willow Steam Plant, which was placed into operation in 1927. Located at Ninth and Willow, the Windrim-designed plant was the company’s first real effort at steam distribution. With the hired help of engineering firm Day and Zimmerman, PECO began putting in place a network of steam lines around center city. By erecting the new plant farther up Ninth Street from the new headquarters building, which also featured steam boilers in its basement, the company could connect the two buildings with a single line beneath Ninth Street. From there, lines stretched out to the east and west beneath Sansom Street and connected to buildings and other branch lines. Although ultimately not as profitable as electrical service, the production and distribution of steam did enlist several new customers, and some buildings in center city still use steam heat today.

This architectural rendering from 1925 demonstrates PECO’s conceptual linked unit plan. Windrim’s drawing shows Richmond Station tripled in size and capacity. The company never needed to carry out the expansion, however, as its efforts evolved into nuclear power. Courtesy the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

An aerial view of Richmond Station shows its atrophied muscle mass. An intricate maze of ironwork that once collected, routed and deposited the plant’s host of required ingredients into place has withered into a jungle of rust.

The mid-1920s, however, were definitely UGI’s years. Upon Arthur W. Thompson’s succession of Samuel Bodine as president of UGI, its comeuppance was swift and thorough, almost mechanized. In 1925, the unscrupulous, politically connected gas trust bought out one of its bigger competitors, the American Gas Company. Two years later, UGI also acquired the cunning engineering firm of Day and Zimmerman. It was clear that the simple gas company consolidation was reaching far beyond its business borders and was becoming a powerful political force. As UGI stock continued to rise, PECO’s was slowly dropping. Talk began to circulate about the desire of UGI to absorb, and ultimately defeat, its archenemy.

Finally, in September 1927, in what was then the largest merger of public utility companies in the United States, a fat, swollen UGI at last sunk its teeth into its rival enterprise, and PECO became a subsidiary of UGI. Although probably a bitter feeling for PECO, Philadelphians seemed uniformly in favor of the consolidation. The Evening Bulletin spoke favorably of the two entities:

So far as public service goes, the Philadelphia community has been exceedingly fortunate in being served by two concerns like the United Gas Improvement Company and the Philadelphia Electric Company. Both have been progressive, enterprising, accommodating, and counting the good favor of their patrons as their chief asset.

In February 1928, the transfer of PECO to UGI was complete, and Walter H. Johnson retired as president. Replacing him was longtime UGI colleague William Taylor. Along with him came Samuel T. Bodine and Arthur W. Thompson into top positions at PECO. Their top priority was to continue absorbing any and every possible nearby utility company. Just under a year later, the consolidation of already consolidated suburban companies brought PECO’s area of operation to five divisions: Philadelphia, headquartered in center city; Delaware, headquartered in Chester; Main Line, headquartered in Ardmore; Schuylkill, headquartered in Norristown; and Eastern, headquartered in Jenkintown. The renovated electric company under UGI also underwent a small name change—the Philadelphia Electric Company dropped the “the” and became simply Philadelphia Electric Company.

The years 1928 and 1929 were frantic ones at Philadelphia Electric’s towering headquarters. Changes in vice-presidents, directors, board members and top engineers—combined with the looming financial crash—kept company president William Taylor on his toes. Fortunately, PECO wasn’t the only party feeling the heat of the oncoming economic collapse. A few of its foes fell on their own swords in the scramble of the late ’20s. The papers focused on the scandal-ridden Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (PRT), whose notorious president, Thomas Mitten, had recently died.

When it was learned that the company almost bankrupted itself in its attempts to gain control of PECO to power its electric rail lines, it looked like PECO might face a totally unwanted legal hassle. But it was soon discovered that Mitten had amassed a suspicious personal fortune of $8 million, and the focus shifted away from PECO. When Mitten was eventually found guilty of milking PRT’s funds for his own personal gain, his full estate was handed over to the PRT; as far as PECO president William Taylor was concerned, another one bit the dust. By the summer of 1929, the entire umbrella of UGI companies—especially PECO—was bracing for impact. As the crash hit, the company took the last comfort it could in the fact that it was now part of a larger economic interest and, it hoped, should therefore survive.

As fate would have it, at the onset of the Great Depression, PECO emerged much less scarred than it had feared. The simple fact that it had been taken over by UGI is probably the main reason it stayed afloat as its asset holders sunk beneath it. As the new decade began, PECO’s officials warmed up to the idea of existing as a leg of UGI. But others foresaw a slow disempowering of the old PECO clique. One such man was the company’s vice-president, Horace P. Liversidge, a bright young Drexel graduate who had come to the company in 1898, when we he was hired as an inspector. As vice-president, he brought a hip way of looking at the business to the boardrooms.

As early as 1926, Liversidge had hypothesized his fears about the UGI merger. The overwhelmingly machine-like impression that would be given off by the utility giant would certainly damage its user-friendly customer interface. Within the first few years of the Depression, the down-to-earth vice-president’s predictions would prove true. As the enormous utility holding company tightened its grip on its business assets, its individual qualities suffered. The ugly head of corruption soon reared in again, and UGI’s relationship with PECO became less and less warm. The Pennsylvania governor’s race focused on the mismanagement of the utility companies, and PECO again unwittingly received negative attention.

Richmond Station’s immense turbine hall still houses the four Westinghouse turbines that for more than half a century powered Philadelphia’s demanding garment districts in Kensington and Frankford.

Progressive Republican gubernatorial candidate Gifford Pinchot promised to clean up the state’s graft-filled utility companies, which he called “useless or worse.” According to Pinchot, those at the top of Pennsylvania’s utility merger were the “cat’s paw” of corruption in the tri-state area. He vowed to “break the stranglehold of the electric, gas, water, trolley, bus, and other monopolies on the cost of living and the government of the state.” He squeezed out a narrow victory and strengthened his fight against UGI. In his inaugural address, he threw a few punches by stating, “The task today is to defeat the attack of the public utilities upon the rule of the people. We have no more compelling duty than to destroy the corruption upon which the power of the utilities depends.”

History has written Pinchot as a good governor. Although his instigation of a frustrated public proved to be a real thorn in PECO’s side, his conquest to outright destroy the public utility companies was a genuine threat to UGI as well. In 1932, Pinchot conducted a statewide investigation on the public utilities. He turned up nothing, however, and narrowed his focus back on their connections to Philadelphia’s controlling banking firms. Many companies themselves voiced the opinion that the public utilities were in desperate need of regulation and reform, but most denied the presence of Pinchot’s accused “power trust.” Still, the majority of utility company owners strongly opposed the idea of public ownership through the sale of stocks. PECO apparently took it upon itself to embark on a quest to personalize its customer relations. Mostly due to the efforts of Liversidge, the new public relations policy helped PECO’s reputation.

The Great Depression years in Philadelphia were not necessarily typical of most American cities. By then, the manufacturing metropolis had spawned so many new industries and introduced so many new production techniques that the deluge of the Depression was not able to engulf it all. The diversity of Philadelphia’s products allowed it to avoid the debilitating blows that crippled other cities. The strange relationship between Philadelphia’s corrupt powers, its monopolized utilities, its cliquish banking hierarchy and its plethora of industries concealed the city in the unique bubble of its own economic force field. The city’s “bosses” saw to it that their financial interests did not suffer, inadvertently strengthening the working class of the city by instigating competition among its important manufactories. Although not totally legal, Philadelphia’s way of dealing with the Great Depression is a shining example of the benefit of an economy with self-defense mechanisms, a trait America has apparently lost to history.

Thanks (in a way) to the willingness of the city’s corrupt Republican machine to fight for its own greed, PECO doggy-paddled its way through the Great Depression. While certainly taking economic hits, the utility monopoly never seemed to significantly stumble. The winning team of William Taylor as the company’s president and Horace P. Liversidge as its general manager would see the company through the harrowing Depression years. They knew how to deal with the public, the politicians and the poverty. John Zimmerman, president of UGI, often attempted to stick his fingers into PECO’s recipe for more control of the company’s finances. Taylor and Liversidge, however, knew just how to keep him at bay.

Meanwhile, UGI—the oldest public utility company in the United States—continued to come under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for violations of the Holding Company Act of 1935. By 1940, the fight had become too much for Zimmerman, who resigned as president and was replaced by William Bodine. Bodine stepped in just in time to be hit by the SEC’s stipulations. UGI was chopped down to less than half of what it had been. The SEC demanded that UGI’s holdings be limited to a single integrated system that included Philadelphia Electric and the Delaware Power and Light Company. UGI’s properties in Arizona, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Kansas and Connecticut were stripped away from its control.

In 1942, the brutish old Philadelphia gas superpower was forced to sell off $27.5 million worth of its properties and stocks. The broken, defeated company crawled away bitterly. PECO now made up 62 percent of its assets, and the proud holding company knew that it couldn’t continue its relationship with its old rival now that the tables had shifted. In 1943, UGI announced its plans to sell off its remaining subsidiaries, and as the company’s top officials bailed out and headed to join the ranks of PECO, it began to readapt to its role of an “ordinary” company, no longer holding political sway over an entire city.

PECO emerged from the ashes of a burning UGI and once again found itself an independent company. The excitement was but a flash, however, as the Second World War became the new focus of the nation. PECO’s output was lowered and its projects put on hold until the end of 1945. Plans for a new station along the Delaware River to serve the growing communities of South Philadelphia had been in the works since the late 1930s. However, issues with construction contracts and difficulty getting the funding approved held up the green light on the project until the beginning of the Second World War. After only months, construction halted again.

Acclaimed architect Paul Philipe Cret, best known for designing the Delaware River (Ben Franklin) Bridge and for his contributions to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, as well as other landmarks in Philadelphia, was chosen to draw up plans for PECO’s new station at the foot of Oregon Avenue. On a smaller acreage than the previous PECO riverside plants, the new Southwark Generating Station would be sandwiched between two very active piers. It would take some clever designing to compress the ingredients of a large-capacity coal-burning station into the cramped industrial district of Southwark. Cret’s design was much more utilitarian than Windrim’s previous plants. Yet it subtly contained modern-esque features, such as the glass bricks in its façade and circular porthole windows. His interesting design methods allowed for a full-capacity generating station on a fraction of the acreage by utilizing vertical space. The combination of the new design and the new technologies that fed it proved Southwark a success. The station’s coal delivery system was designed to use gravity to distribute incoming coal to the furnaces. This resulted in a taller, narrower building with much less conveyor belt footage.

A closer view of one of Westinghouse’s enormous turbine generators at Richmond Station. Placed into service in 1931, its assembly required the labor of more than one hundred workers.

Work on Southwark resumed in 1945, and the station was completed in 1947. But its capacity was updated again in the following decades. The postwar bliss had finally kicked in by 1950, and the future looked very bright for PECO. Its customer base was increasing by about 30,000 new customers per year and would continue to rise due to the development of new suburbs within its service area, such as Levittown. The city itself also grew after the war. The sprawling new northeast filled up with homes at a record pace. Two more turbines—powered by natural gas—were added to Delaware Station in 1954, helping greatly to carry the heavy load demanded by the city at its most flourishing period. By 1958, more than 2 million citizens lived in Philadelphia, and as new electrical appliances hit the market, the city’s demand for power was never greater.

The main control board of Richmond’s switch house resembles the bridge of the starship Enterprise. Once lit up and twinkling, this twenty-foot curved panel was the central brain of the station’s operations.

A view from Richmond’s switch house control center overlooks its engulfing turbine hall. The massive design of the plant—with its spacey, futuristic physical features—was inspiring enough to become the set of several science fiction movies.

But when nuclear power was discovered in the 1960s, PECO’s riverside plants began their descent out of necessity. By the 1970s, the city’s grid was mostly connected to the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant, and the city’s former palaces of power were slowly phased out of operation. Delaware Station’s turbines were offline by 1978 and were removed from the building soon after in the first stage of its planned demolition process. But when the realization came that the gargantuan concrete structure would have to be dismantled, not demolished, the plans were put on hold, fortunately not yet seeing fruition. Richmond Station was offline by 1985 and underwent a long cleanout process. It then sat, sealed to prevent asbestos leakage, and began its relationship with rust and withering.

In 1995, Hollywood director and ex–Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, while scouting locations for his sci-fi classic 12 Monkeys, reportedly fell in love with Richmond Station upon first laying eyes on its massive turbine hall. Several scenes from the film were shot at both Richmond and Delaware Stations. According to Gilliam, it provided the exact look he wanted for the film’s post-apocalyptic future setting, with “tubes everywhere, huge rusty metal tubes.” Although the first, 12 Monkeys was not the last Hollywood blockbuster to integrate the unique look of Philadelphia’s abandoned power plants into its storyline. In 1999, PECO embarked on the largest asbestos abatement project ever carried out in Philadelphia. The abatement of Richmond Station by the Brandenburg Industrial Service Company took—according to the company’s website—seven thousand man hours. The company removed 2,552 tons of asbestos from the building’s sixteen boilers and introduced new techniques to minimize employee exposure. Meanwhile, Delaware Station’s natural gas turbines—the last phase of its shutdown—went offline finally in 2002.

In 2006, film director Michael Bay used Richmond and Delaware Stations rather elaborately for a sequence in his hit film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Soon after, local filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan turned the sublevel of Richmond’s turbine hall into the interior of a giant spaceship for his film The Last Airbender, while Delaware’s turbine hall was featured prominently as a hideout for a gang of cannibals in the 2007 horror film Tooth and Nail. In 2009, Delaware Station’s 1954 addition, housing its natural gas turbines, was demolished, revealing the original structure in its unobscured form. Both plants have been thoroughly sealed but, sadly, have experienced enough attention from scrap metal thieves to warrant the presence of a security force. Today, PECO’s stations along the Delaware are coveted by their owner, Excelon Energy, which does its best to maintain them. Currently, a plan to revitalize the Delaware River waterfront threatens the plants’ survival. Although efforts by local groups have raised much awareness of their importance, the future of PECO’s megalithic monuments to the city’s largest monopoly are uncertain.