CHAPTER 2

INDUSTRY

Once holding the title of “Workshop of the World,” Philadelphia was one of America’s most important industrial cities. Its wide array of factories produced everything from fabrics to fine foods. Its endless aisles of row homes were built around the sooty brick buildings that supported all facets of survival for their inhabitants. The majority of working-class families living in the city were employed by its industrial hierarchy. Old-fashioned, muscle-bound manual labor accounted for the success of this manufacturing mecca. In the daring new twentieth century, these elaborate complexes—some going back a century, using elbow grease and steam engines—were bound to clash with the age of electricity.

But even the new technological wonder of electrical power would have to fight for its supremacy in the final lap of the Industrial Revolution. New mechanical technologies would also push electrical power to its extremes, forcing it to keep up with a growing city and its constantly expanding industrial framework. As the population increased, more demand was building for goods and services; Philadelphia’s industries not only stayed afloat amid traumatic financial and social changes but also pioneered new technologies and products. If Philadelphia entrepreneurs had not undertaken their fateful claims, the country as we know it today would be a noticeably different one.

Therefore, it is not surprising that buried in Philadelphia’s old books and buildings and embedded into its modern physical character are many common American cultural “firsts.” Taken for granted by some and completely unrealized by others, Philadelphia’s historical mannerisms were the blueprint for modern American life. It seems only natural that a crowded, diverse city on the forefront of technology, spirituality, sociality and government would indeed spawn such trendsetters. The city’s aforementioned manufacturing and production strength spread indiscriminately throughout its array of businesses. Interwoven closely with the city’s corrupt Republican machine, these traits—and their eventual climaxes—gave birth to the Philadelphia of the twentieth century: a city that has been searching for itself ever since.

Every facet of business in Philadelphia—from investment to industry and retail to food production—possessed its own unique aspects. In some cases, such as with the Edward G. Budd Company, the product itself was the pioneering force whose mere invention and mass production changed our way of life. In other cases, as with the Freihofer and Tasty Baking Companies, a revolutionary improvement to an established work was the fortune factor. This chapter gives a glimpse into the past and present-day state of three of Philly’s pioneer industrial manufactories.

Light through grimy industrial windows highlights the colors of rust and decay in this small corner of the Budd Company’s gigantic 2.4-million-square-foot facility on Hunting Park Avenue.

Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company

EDWARD GOWEN BUDD was born in Smyrna, Delaware, in December 1870. He studied engineering and industrial sciences in Philadelphia in the 1890s. Possessing a drive for success, Budd took his subject of study very seriously, and upon graduation, he and several other colleagues worked on steel production contracts with the Midvale Steel Company, the J.G. Brill Manufacturing Company and other local interests. Through his keen sense of innovation, Budd knew from the beginning of his career that the business of making railroad steel was probably his most profitable option. After quickly acquiring contracts, along with partners and backers, for building new all-steel railroad cars for the Pennsylvania Railroad, Budd’s business really took off.

In 1912, Budd’s engineering labs perfected a new method of welding pieces of steel together. The common method caused the steel to discolor and rust at the joints. Budd’s method was faster, cheaper, used less material and, best yet, resisted corrosion. Fatefully, it was this technological discovery—shot welding—that set Budd’s company apart from other manufacturers of shaped steel products. Buying out of his partnerships, he officially founded the Budd Company in 1912. At a small building at Aramingo and Tioga Streets in Kensington, his thirty employees began his legacy. Soon, Budd needed more space. He purchased a building not far away at I and Ontario Streets, where the company fulfilled its first contracts for the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1913, Budd saw an opportunity in the Motor City. Upon the bankruptcy of the Grabowsky Power Wagon Company, Budd acquired its former factory in Detroit for $110,000. In it, Budd’s workers produced an estimated thirty car bodies per day.

Soon the results of Budd’s shot welding technique began to appeal to other branches of the growing transportation industry. He received contracts for automobile bodies by several new companies, such as Packard and Buick. As contracts continued pouring in, Budd expanded his workforce up to seven hundred full-time employees, and the thriving business soon outgrew its inhabitance. In 1914, the company moved its operations from its small Kensington site to a new building that it began leasing at the corner of Hunting Park Avenue and Stokely Street, in the city’s industrial Nicetown section. Its railroad corridor offered easier access, more space and less residential surroundings.

The Midvale Steel Company’s giant plant was just one block away, and other new manufactories were sprouting up in the area, such as the Tasty Baking Company down the street. By 1916, Budd’s one thousand employees were producing more than five hundred car bodies per day. The company continued to make room for itself by merging with or buying out other similar companies. A new division—the Budd Wheel Company—was established in 1916 as part of the company’s Detroit-based interests. Its first line of product was the steel wire wheel, of which it produced more than 250,000 in its first two years of operation. But as the year came to a close, priorities began to change.

The First World War brought Budd up from an aspiring force to a serious powerhouse. As with most industrial centers at the time, Budd was mandated by the government to shift production to supply the war effort. His plant on Hunting Park Avenue began expanding to the north, south and west. The local firm of Ballinger & Perot was hired to build, and later expand, the concrete factory. In 1917, Budd received a contract from the U.S. Army Ordnance Department for 2.5 million steel helmets for America’s Expeditionary Forces. The plant received shipments of square sheets of manganese steel that were sixteen square inches. Using giant presses, workers then shaped them into form. An official military corps of inspectors, stationed at the plant, was responsible for testing and approving the helmets. They had to withstand direct blasts of .45-caliber bullets and dent no deeper than a half inch. After passing inspection, they were taken to the Ford Motor Company building (later the Botany 500 company) at Broad and Lehigh Avenues, where they were painted and fitted with chin straps and lining. By the war’s end, Budd had produced 1,160,829 helmets. As with many large industrial plants during the war years, Budd hired women to fill the void that the war left on his production force.

Budd’s car bodies were shipped primarily via rail. In this 2012 photo, a spur of the old Reading Railroad line rounds its way into a cavernous loading bay, where product was shipped and supplies were received.

After the war, production at Budd’s Nicetown plant almost doubled what it had been before the war. New contracts for automobile bodies, as well as train and even airplane bodies, were received. Expanding his facilities, Budd enlarged his Detroit plant for the manufacture of locomotive wheels. He also expanded the Nicetown plant yet again, bringing the square footage to more than 500,000. In the 1920s, Budd thrived, as his company’s welding techniques and growing workforce earned it more contracts. In 1921, Budd celebrated the production of its millionth car body.

In the midst of the Roaring Twenties, Budd added more profit from contracts with auto manufacturers in France and England that paid handsomely for the use of his company’s shot welding method. He also purchased the Liberty Motor Car Company of Detroit and expanded his workforce to a beastly ten thousand. The company operated six hundred presses daily until 1929, when the looming stock market crash considerably lowered auto sales. As the company’s contracts began to drop away, Budd ingeniously focused efforts on research and product development. In a short time, the company created and patented another new technique: the Shotwell electric process. This allowed for the easy welding of stainless steel plates, which until then had been a difficult and frustrating task.

The Depression of the 1930s slowed Budd’s momentum, but at the same time, it provided the space and opportunity for the company to get creative. It was during the first half of the decade that Budd’s designers pumped out their uniquely American designs for new high-speed rail cars: Zephyrs. The Zephyr was the single product for which Budd is probably best known. Its sleek, futuristic design and stainless steel body encapsulated the Art Deco movement. The glimmering new train appeared on posters and paintings, in films and photographs, and not simply because of its totally unprecedented look—it was capable of reaching speeds previously thought impossible. At a substantially lighter weight than hulking steel trains, the Zephyr’s streamlined use of stainless steel accounted for many of its key features. And thanks to Budd’s new patented Shotwell process, he practically owned the future of railroad.

During the Depression, Budd also introduced the revolutionary front-wheel-drive system for automobiles, which was incorporated into new cars being made by the Citroen Company. Budd’s designs for the Lincoln Zephyr and the Chrysler Airflow found their way to production in Detroit, and contracts jumped back to 1928 levels. The company actually had to hire back the thousands of workers it had laid off in 1929. By 1935, when many industries were barely staying afloat, workers at the Budd Company hardly noticed the Depression. In fact, Budd was actually opening new facilities in Europe. In 1936, the company opened the Ambi-Budd Company in Berlin. It quickly became an interest of the rising National Socialist Party and was endorsed and eventually nationalized. The Ambi-Budd plant produced the Volkswagen and the Opel Kadet.

An eighth-mile-long stretch of open floor once accommodated thousands of workers every day at Budd. The plant helped build Philadelphia’s economy, providing steady jobs with its private and military contracts.

The French company Renault, after producing what it called the Juvaquatre, was sued by Budd for copyright infringement. Renault’s new car was a close copy of the Kadet. Budd won the suit, further strengthening Ambi-Budd’s European clout. But Budd’s overseas business successes must have turned bitter rather quickly, as the inevitability of the greatest war in modern history grew nearer to America’s doorstep. Budd continued good relations with his colleagues in Berlin until they became too awkward. He gradually slowed operations in Germany to a halt. The plant was soon taken over by the Nazi government.

Back at home, industries were gearing up for war. Most were transitioning production to support the war effort. Budd, however, already had everything it needed for the production of military supplies. Not only did Budd contribute to the cause, but it also became one of a small number of essential war manufacturing facilities—building tanks, treads, armored trains, jeeps, airplane bodies, specialty vehicles and equipment and weaponry. The industrial giant flexed its muscles, producing thousands of vehicle bodies in just months. As with the First World War, thousands of women were employed at the complex.

By 1942, Budd’s workforce had swelled to a ridiculous twenty thousand. The demanding war brought on the need for yet another expansion. Land was purchased in Northeast Philadelphia, where plenty of room could be afforded for a new “bombproof” facility for the production of rail cars. Located on Red Lion Road near Verree Road, the new plant was operational by 1945, although its immediate schedule was ammunition production until 1946. It did not appear, however, that rebounding from war production was a difficult process for Budd. While many industries were catching their breath, Budd’s facilities shifted smoothly back to full-schedule civilian production in only months.

After the fog of war cleared, Budd consolidated some of its subsidiaries, such as Budd Wheel in Detroit. It also changed its official name from the Edward G. Budd Company to the Budd Manufacturing Company. During this litigation process in 1946, the company’s founder, Edward G. Budd, died in his seventy-fifth year of age. The company was carried on without losing pace by his son, Edward G. Budd Jr. In 1949, Edward Jr. spent almost $10 million expanding the powerful Nicetown operation. A new stamping plant was built in Indiana, and the Red Lion facility was further enlarged with a foundry for the production of brake drums. But before Budd’s wartime production lines had time to cool down, the Korean War started them back up. Although Budd’s workforce dropped by about 15 percent due to the war, its major production operations did not seem to suffer.

The Korean War actually strengthened the company further, making necessary its role as a full-time military contractor. At the Nicetown plant, a new facility was added along the western end of the property for the shaping of tank hulls, jet turbine blades, propellers and other official equipment. While seeming to constantly grow, Budd kept its progression at an even pace by breaking the giant company down into seven divisions, each dealing with a different type of production. It also consolidated its many subcontractors that built specific machinery and tools for the company. The 1950s were anything but slow. Production moved into new technologies, keeping Budd not merely in the loop but rather, in many ways, on top of it.

By 1960, almost half of Budd’s production had become military-based, but at the same time, it was developing new methods in every stage of its automotive and rail car divisions. The epitome of a successful company, while creating new radar detectors in one division, Budd was simultaneously engineering and perfecting the first automotive disc brake in 1965. In 1967, Edward G. Budd Jr. retired as the company president. While still growing by purchasing other companies, such as the Milford Fabricating Company of Detroit and the Gindy Manufacturing Company of Pennsylvania, Budd was shedding the majority of its loose manufacturing skin. In 1971, Edward G. Budd Jr. died, and the company’s glory days were beginning to see their end.

The 1970s were a gradual downward slope for Budd, and by 1980, its former business indestructibility had withered. By 1990, its hulking workforce numbered fewer than ten thousand. As the company’s pioneering technologies and techniques became common in the late twentieth century, the Budd Manufacturing Company took its seat among the great American industrial giants. Today, the company still exists, though at a fraction of its former size. By 2002, the company had completely relocated its operations to Detroit. When the Nicetown plant finally closed its doors for good in 2010, some interesting ideas for its reuse were tossed around.

A single ray of light sneaks into Budd’s enormous main floor. Although larger than many industrial plants in itself, this fifty-acre room is but a fraction of Budd’s gargantuan Nicetown facility.

A casino developer decided against using the property in favor of a site along the Delaware River. Hollywood actor and hometown hero Will Smith was supposedly interested in turning the property into a full-fledged film production studio to rival those on the West Coast. This plan, too, fell by the wayside. Today, Budd’s dark facility looms large along a stretch of Hunting Park Avenue. Its machinery since relocated and its workforce no longer bustling, the giant concrete monstrosity has been the scene of at least one homicide since 2012. Its location, in the once thriving neighborhood of Nicetown, is the biggest depreciator of its value. Nevertheless, Budd, the chest-beating hulk of industrial power, is a name that Philadelphians will not soon forget.

The top floor of Budd’s assembly building shows off its solid ironwork, a type of construction rarely seen today. Driven by fears of foreign attacks, accidental explosions and fires, the reinforced concrete plant was built to last for centuries.

Once the largest single bakery in the world, the former Freihofer Baking Company at the intersection of Twentieth and Indiana sits patiently, waiting for its next tenant.

Freihofer Baking Company

PHILADELPHIA’S NICETOWN/TIOGA section was always a place full of industry. The neighborhood’s factories led the way in its development, and most of their employees lived within walking distance. Today, the area is one of the city’s most dangerous, and these once bustling factories today sit crumbling, lending visually to the area’s rough reputation. Barely distinguishable from its abandoned industrial neighbors, the Freihofer Baking Company’s large food factory at Twentieth and Indiana Streets hides its significant past from the crime and poverty surrounding it.

The disorganized structure is a collection of additions and expansions, as most of the original buildings have been replaced, demolished or hidden completely by new construction. But behind the random brick walls, the concrete additions, the natural growth and the graffiti, there remains a nostalgia—a portal into a time when Philadelphia’s wide variety of neighborhoods was its very identity. A time when hot baked goods were delivered personally by the baker aboard his horse-drawn bread truck. Using the present-day neighborhood as a point of reference, it is actually difficult to picture the Freihofer Baking Company in its heyday, surrounded by acres of wheat fields and horse stables.

The Freihofer family—often locally pronounced “fry-huffer”—emigrated from Germany to Philadelphia after the Civil War. The family soon spread across the river to Camden. In 1884, Charles Freihofer opened a small bakery there. Apparently possessing a natural ability in the baking trade, Charles’s bakery met with success. But it would be the intuition of his brother, William, that would set the family bakery on the road to industrial significance. When William was thirteen, he established a local milk route, for which he created a speedy delivery system. William joined the family business in 1890 and became immediately interested in the prospect of establishing a system of fast delivery of the store’s baked goods throughout the urban center around Camden and, if possible, Philadelphia. By 1893, the Freihofer brothers’ clever combination of baking and delivery techniques was proving very profitable. With big plans, they officially started the Freihofer Vienna Baking Company.

The brothers purchased four acres at Twenty-fourth and Master Streets in the Sharswood neighborhood of North Philadelphia and opened a larger bakery there. But by 1901, the business was already outgrowing this new facility. Following the city’s northward industrial migration, the brothers purchased twelve undeveloped acres in the neighborhood of Nicetown, about one mile north. They hired the architectural and engineering firm of William Steele & Sons to design and build a new factory among open fields along the Reading Railroad’s line, near the current intersection of Twentieth and Indiana. Since the area surrounding the factory was just beginning its development, plenty of room was afforded for harvest space and building expansion.

The brothers’ exciting new business ideas relied heavily on their horse-and-wagon delivery system. The company’s clever use of hot metal in its delivery wagons ensured that the product arrived hot and fresh. At a time when most in the city walked to their local bakery for hot bread, Freihofer’s delivery system was very well received. All a customer had to do was hang the company’s alert flag (which they received upon their first delivery) on their front door or window, signaling their interest in continuing delivery service. In a few short years, the brothers acquired more surrounding property, expanding their wheat fields and stables west to Twenty-first Street and north to Clearfield.

An early twentieth-century review of Freihofer’s—as the bakery came to be known—from Pennsylvania and Its Public Men praises the company’s intuition in its own turn-of-the-century way:

In olden times when one’s mother used to stand at the table mixing dough for the family consumption, it was no common occurrence for her to become fretful, annoyed and peevish. In later days these obstacles were overcome by machinery, which has done the work without any complaint from the operator, and perhaps the Freihofer Company, of Philadelphia, was one of the first to solve the perplexing problem. It almost appears astonishing, but nonetheless it is true, that they established this gigantic business in 1893 upon a small scale, and through their own individual ability and efforts they have reached such a stage to-day that they manufacture upward of 100,000 loaves of bread a day, giving employment to between five and six hundred hands.

In 1909, Charles Freihofer boasted to the press that he was in the process of expanding the Nicetown property into the “largest bakery in the world.” He wasn’t kidding. The Freihofers spent almost $200,000 turning their small business into a colossal, mechanized food production facility with its own electrical generating plant. The new sanitary ovens and roller beds, as well as the brand-new industrial-sized electric dough mixers, required a heavy load of electricity to operate. The plant received its supply of coal from the Reading’s line. The enlargement of the facility necessitated the final and biggest expansion of Freihofer’s delivery system. With the property now extended to contain more than two square blocks, the brothers erected what was reported at the time to be the world’s single largest horse stable building, with a capacity for more than 350 horses and 160 wagons. Also contained under the same roof were wagon repair and horseshoeing shops.

The first few years of business at the giant bakery must have lived up to the brothers’ hopes, as the Freihofers branched out to several other areas while still maintaining the Master Street facility and several others in New Jersey. In 1913, William Freihofer acquired property in Troy, New York, and opened another large baking plant there. By 1914, the company was employing almost one thousand workers at its two locations. In 1920, a third location was added at Fifty-second and Florence Streets in West Philadelphia. The business then spread down to Chester and Wilmington. Thanks to almost intrusive solicitation by William Freihofer himself, the company gained contracts to supply all the best restaurants in town with their bread, including the new ones in the busy lobby of the Reading Railroad Terminal.

While Charles was busy on the baking side of the business, William was using his financial expertise to expand the company’s interests. William became involved with several other businesses, however, and fears surfaced about his loyalty to the family business. But he continued to faithfully run the company while also serving as president of the Northwestern Trust Company at Ridge and Columbia Avenues. In 1916, William’s son, Stanley Freihofer, also joined the company. Stanley quickly began assuming more managerial positions and carrying some of the heavier weight. The brothers soon had the Philadelphia market in their pockets, turning out their highest profits yet. As with most elite Gilded Age businessmen, the Freihofers’ clout allowed for their inclusion in city affairs—political and otherwise—and made them a household name in Philadelphia culture.

A cold February day in North Philly. In this view, a doorway at Freihofer’s frames the face of a conflicted city, stuck somewhere between the nostalgia of its past and the promise of its future.

When the First World War revved Philadelphia’s factories to full throttle, the Freihofers did their part. Proudly offering its “Liberty Loaf,” the company proclaimed that it was the only bread endorsed by the War Department and was made according to wartime shortage standards. It was generally thought that cutting back on ingredients like butter would make for a very unappetizing dough. Freihofer’s, however, pulled off an impressive stunt by cleverly relabeling certain ingredients to fit in with government requirements while still containing enough dairy to hold to standard taste. The company embarked on a massive ad campaign in local newspapers and magazines, making the most out of its voluntary but painful agreement with the War Department. It was not shy in telling customers to “save a slice of bread a day” by buying its Liberty Loaf.

Despite the sign, this door at Freihofer’s remains ajar. After a multitude of uses, the one-hundred-year-old building retains very few of its original features.

At the time, bread usually went stale by the end of each day. Although this must have been very profitable for the baker, it naturally became an annoyance to the customer. Freihofer’s was one of the first companies to use malt extract in its dough, thus allowing it to keep fresh for days. Its full-page ad, which peddled “large double loaves” for ten cents each, explained:

Philadelphia and suburbs have over 400,000 families. If each family wasted one slice of bread per day, due to being dry or stale, it would mean an actual loss of over 30,000 loaves of bread daily, representing approximately 16,000 bushels of wheat each month of 30 days; or the appalling yearly bread waste in money value of over eight hundred thousand dollars.

William Freihofer’s success and wide esteem was apparently not enough to numb the pain caused by the loss of his oldest son, Charles, who was killed in the First World War. William, in his fifties, gradually sank away from the company and finally died in 1932, leaving behind a baking legacy. Lesser known is that William—a thirty-second-degree Mason—had a strong personal interest in the movies. He funded the construction of several theaters in the first two decades of the twentieth century, including the still functioning Tower Theater. His son William Jr. continued as president of the company, bracing it for the impact of the Great Depression. Its decade-old plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, was the first casualty of the crippling financial draught, merging with the Firch Baking Company of Erie in 1933. But the Freihofer umbrella still operated thirteen baking facilities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware and employed more than two thousand workers. One year later, William Jr. ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a candidate from Delaware County.

When William Jr. died in 1939, his will stated that he wished the company to remain under family ownership for “as long as possible.” His brother Stanley, after some convincing, agreed to run the company. However, he, too, passed away just over a year later in 1941 at age forty-seven. Fortunately for William Jr., the business stayed family-owned for another decade, as the next generation of Freihofers filled the presidency. Even after being absorbed by two other large conglomerates, members of the Freihofer family sequentially acted as the company’s general manager. But as the physical neighborhood surrounding Freihofer’s plant at Twentieth and Indiana began to change, and the city’s industries settled into their economic niches, the company began to cut back its operations in Philadelphia. Its other facilities in New York, New Jersey and Delaware were outproducing the Nicetown plant by the close of the Second World War. Freihofer’s would slowly transfer and consolidate its production facilities and business headquarters to the Troy plant, which is still operating today.

In 1949, the company sponsored a short-lived children’s broadcast called Breadtime Stories, which shamelessly featured a cartoon rabbit named Freddie Freihofer. By 1956, Freihofer’s baking complex at Twentieth and Indiana, once the largest bakery in the world, was considered primitive. Without the option of expansion in the crowded industrial neighborhood, the almost fifty-year-old bakery finally closed its doors. The building was sold two years later, and the company’s operations in the City of Brotherly Love were never the same. By the 1960s, the neighborhood was experiencing its final round of “white flight,” as the last of its old inhabitants relocated to the suburbs or the northeast. Property values were steadily declining, as crime and poverty continued to box-in the old baking factory. It’s next occupant, a local textile company, was settled in by 1959, and the building was converted for use appropriately.

Unused for decades, a historic atmosphere lingers at Freihofer’s. This ultra-utilitarian restroom is a great example of early twentieth-century industrial construction.

Rows of sewing tables, operated by hundreds of local employees, kept the building in full use until the 1970s, when it changed hands again. By the 1990s, the building was serving as a warehouse for arcade machines, for rent and sale to vendors. By the turn of the twenty-first century, it was a warehouse for just about anything a customer was willing to pay to store. A local supermarket chain, Kelly’s Korner, rented the newest and largest addition to the building, serving as its last tenant. It had become completely abandoned by 2003. In 2008, the dilapidated building was used to nice effect in the film Law Abiding Citizen, serving as the location for a grisly murder scene. Ironically, one of the country’s first motion picture studios was once located just across the street from Freihofer Baking Company. Lubinville, the square-block studio complex built in 1910 by early filmmaker Sigmund Lubin, tragically burned to the ground four productive years later. Most of his flammable film stock was lost in the fire.

This electric panel once fed the dozens of dough mixers at Freihofer’s, as noted by the decorative, hand-painted label on the inside of the door.

The main storeroom at Freihofer’s (shown here in 2011) served as the shooting location for a grisly murder scene in the 2009 film Law Abiding Citizen.

Today, the Freihofer Company is owned and operated by the Grupo Bimbo Company, the world’s largest bread chain, and still produces its baked goods at its Troy plant. Since the Troy branch began as one of William’s subsidiaries in 1913, it independently celebrated its 100^th anniversary in 2013. The company’s true stomping grounds, however, known today as Allegheny West, have long gone stale. Nicetown has at present one of the city’s highest homicide rates but actually has improved since the 1990s. Nonetheless, the community’s days of localized industrial self-support—not to mention bakeries—are definitely over. And still, many Philadelphians will never forget the classic red logo and the fresh smell of Freihofer’s bread.

This 2010 aerial view of the Tasty Baking Company shows its neighborhood presence, positioned along the railroad.

Tasty Baking Company

AT THE BEGINNING of the twentieth century, the local bakery was far different than it is today. Bakeries and neighborhood grocery stores dotted Philadelphia’s landscape by the hundreds. Through their personal connections to their communities, these local family-owned businesses once thrived and were often the places of gossip and social interaction for neighborhood residents. Usually the work of preparing, baking, wrapping and displaying the food in these local shops was performed by a single individual, commonly the shop owner. Before a solid method of food sanitation was put into place, health conditions in these small food stores were mediocre at best.

In 1913, a young man named Philip J. Baur, while working in his father’s busy Pittsburg bakery, Baur Bros., became frustrated with its laborious methods of preparing food. Baur sought new ways of improving his father’s business, including clever new recipes. In a year, the eager entrepreneur had impressed just about everyone he knew with his new pastries. In 1914, under the encouragement of his friends and family and armed with his arsenal of new ideas, the ambitious Baur started his own bakery. Taking the business to Pennsylvania’s largest city, Baur’s Philadelphia-based bakery got off to a fairly normal start among hundreds of others offering fair competition. It was not until Baur met Cleveland baker Herbert C. Morris that his new ideas began to take shape. Morris was reportedly enraptured by Baur’s new recipes and production ideas, and together the two created what they called a revolutionary step in sanitation. By baking several small prewrapped cakes on a baking slab instead of one traditional cake, the baker would never have to handle the cake post-bake. This would save time, Baur thought, and would improve the unsanitary condition of the method at the time.

As Baur and Morris were finalizing their new business venture, Morris became ill with appendicitis. While confined to a convalescent home, Morris created the title for their new product: Tastykake. With its simple, clever name, the Tasty Baking Company was officially formed in 1914. Baur’s individually wrapped cakes were appealing enough to investors—thanks in large part to Morris’s business connections—and the partners raised $50,000. They purchased an old foundry building at Twenty-fourth and Sedgely Streets and converted it into the first bakery of the Tasty Baking Company. After only weeks of operation, the giant ovens of the new bakery were churning out Baur’s innovative product. Packaged in a small blue box displaying the slogan “The Cake that Made Mother Stop Baking” and priced at ten cents, the new treat came in three varieties—iced yellow, white and chocolate and raisin and molasses.

In October 1914, Morris—mostly recovered from his appendicitis—began peddling the pastry to neighborhood grocers in North Philadelphia, then South and then West. Local stores could not keep them on their shelves, and a demand quickly grew for Baur and Morris’s trademarked cakes. By the end of the busy year of 1914, the company had grossed more than $300,000 in sales. Morris sought out more delivery routes beyond the city limits, solidifying their customer base. Sales soon extended to Baltimore via steamship, and dozens of new local routes were added. By 1917, yearly gross sales had risen to more than $900,000.

Cargo elevators that once busily shuffled through Tasty’s six sprawling floors sit silent in this 2012 photo.

With the onset of World War I came the first real test for the Tasty Baking Company. The shortage of labor, combined with the scarcity of sugar, made it difficult for Baur to maintain his quality standard of superior ingredients. He spread his nerves thin trying to come up with another innovation to keep his products from becoming a casualty of the war. But while other bakeries produced stale bread from lackluster ingredients due to war shortages, the Tastykake gained even more fame as the cake that never went stale. Thanks to its original design concept, the prepackaged and sealed cakes stayed fresh. This further graced the company’s roaring sales record, which by the end of the war had reached more than $2 million annually. Its customer base was spread throughout the tri-state area using trucks, trains and barges. Baur’s original bout of genius turned out to be a bigger deal than he realized, and he regained focus after the war. But Baur’s erratic reputation as a perfectionist who suffered from stress was proving itself true.

By 1920, the business had outgrown the old building on Sedgley Avenue, and a new food factory was constructed only a few blocks away. The new six-story building on Hunting Park Avenue near Twenty-eighth Street opened in 1922. Its location in Nicetown was just two blocks from the Edward G. Budd Company and provided seventy-two thousand square feet of space. Tasty’s new production levels only increased demand throughout the Roaring Twenties. Expansion of the building continued all the way through the decade with five additions, bringing the total building area to 350,000 square feet by 1930. The first year of the Depression saw a huge drop in Tasty’s sales, but Baur continued to innovate by releasing the milk chocolate–covered cake. The cakes came three to a package and were economically priced at five cents. It seemed that Baur’s best work—like many innovators’—came at times of enormous national trauma.

Another of Baur’s pivotal hardship-inspired ideas was the Tastykake pie in 1931, which would become the company’s best seller. Through advertising in newspaper and radio, Tasty’s pie was an instant success. One year later, the square-shaped pies became their current rectangular shape. The “Tastypie” was the first of its kind ever marketed in the United States and revolutionized the snack cake. New technologies allowed Tasty’s officials to concentrate on developing a system of mechanized automation to produce their cakes. Their work came to a halt, however, with the outbreak of World War II. Following the war, though, sales continued to skyrocket, with gross profits reaching $16 million by 1951. Philip Baur died later that year at the age of sixty-six. His son-in-law, Paul Kaiser—a skilled insurance executive—was called on to assume the presidency of the company, which he did in 1953. Baur’s partner, Herbert Morris, remained chairman of the board until his death in 1960.

The ’50s were a great period for Tastykake. The company perfected its image as the maker of Philadelphia’s signature pastry. Philip Baur Jr. came aboard in 1952 and was a voice for major modernization and structural changes to the company. An $8 million capital investment saw the plant revamped and restocked. New machinery and technologies filled the enlarged building’s floors. When Tasty enlisted the help of engineer Alfred Gramp to develop a wax paper cake wrapping machine in 1957, its move toward mechanization—and away from manual production—marked the end of Tasty’s days as a neighborhood-friendly, employee-driven local bakery and the beginning of its modern existence as a corporation. As wages slowly rose and labor unions became more powerful, Tasty began shedding its massive workforce in favor of technology. The company appealed to customers by noting that because of technology, their hands would be the first to ever touch the cake. The automatic wrapping system was hailed as a “major breakthrough” by Tasty’s president, Paul Kaiser.

The sun finds its way into an office area at the Tasty Baking Company, where staff memos addressing its closure still hang in place.

In 1957, the plant on Hunting Park Avenue was enlarged for the sixth time with a 55,000-square-foot addition, housing the new mechanical and research and development departments. The continued modernization of the facility was lead by engineering director John F. Wettig and chemical engineer John N. Wurst. Antiquated ovens were replaced with large, high-speed electric models, one of which was 160 feet long. An improved delivery system was also implemented, and it greatly cut down the amount of manpower required. Wurst described the company’s progression: “Mr. Baur developed a long life for our product years ago. Our contribution has been in terms of maintaining it, while improving efficiencies and economies under the stress of increased and faster production.”

In 1961, shares of Tasty’s stock were opened to the market, and the company began proudly advertising its status as “publicly owned.” Philadelphia’s cliquish inner circle of wealth saw to it that the company, as one of its own, would be well placed in the market—and well watched. Tasty’s board of directors became filled with prominent Philadelphia businessmen such as Edward G. Budd Jr., Casimir A. Sienkiewicz (CEO of the Central Penn National Bank) and Andrew B. Young of the law firm Stradley, Ronon, Stevens and Young. By Tasty’s fiftieth anniversary in 1964, the company’s public relations had much improved, and it branched out its service further. The 1970s saw the rise of snack foods and convenience store candy, and Tasty’s snack cakes held their own against a new wave of prepackaged junk food.

A giant pedestal on the roof of Tasty’s food factory on Hunting Park Avenue once supported the building’s colorful water reserve tank—a landmark visible for blocks in the 1940s and ’50s.

By the 1980s, Tastykake was a household name in Philadelphia and surrounding communities. Although it had a decade of good hometown recognition, Tasty’s sales were beginning to feel the squeeze. The 1990s were a bit better, eventually seeing Tasty return to a slight boost in sales. A strong refocus on the company’s advertising campaign showed as the new millennium began. By 2005, the company had finally dealt with its long-closeted need for a newer plant. The ninety-year-old building on Hunting Park Avenue was now in one of Philadelphia’s most dangerous neighborhoods, and its facilities were becoming slowly less desirable. The company began searching for a site for a new plant, but legalities with the city drew the process out for several years.

Eventually, the Tastykake Company purchased a portion of land along the Schuylkill River just above its mouth at the Delaware and erected its new facility in 2009. The site was formerly occupied by the Tidewater Grain Company and the naval yard’s brig facility. The company also built a new headquarters building in the heart of the navy yard in 2011, lending its face to the blossoming business park. The administration had completely transferred its operations from the Nicetown plant to the new buildings by the end of the year. Almost instantly, the stoic concrete building on Hunting Park Avenue fell into the hands of scrappers, squatters and graffiti writers.

Today, the Tastykake Company is one of Philadelphia’s more successful businesses, employing hundreds of Philadelphians. At the time of this writing, Tasty’s old food factory sits silently, awaiting restoration or demolition. While the future of the company is bright, its past is also worth remembering. How intuition and hard work raised a small business into a trendsetter is not a unique lesson in America, but the Tasty Baking Company is a unique building block of Philadelphia. In 2014, Tasty celebrated its 100^th birthday by releasing some of its bestselling flavors in special packaging. Its name is one of much reverence in Philadelphia, and its slogan is as true today as it was fifty years ago: “Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tastykake.”