CHAPTER 5
MILITARY
From the mind of Philadelphia’s pacifist founder, William Penn, came a city unlike any in the world. A city that was intolerant to indifference, poverty and inequality. A clean, modern city with buildings built of brick that no great fire could destroy (like London in 1666). In Penn’s dream of a place where any and all were welcome to live and, most importantly, practice any religion they chose, Philadelphia was a city that had no need for defenses. After all, who would seek to harm the people of such a unified society? Unfortunately, Penn’s dream was a bit too perfect. Shortly after the arrival of its first settlers, conflicts began with Leni-Lenape Indians and Swedes, as well as infighting between colonists. Since the days of Penn’s proprietorship, talk of protecting and defending the city from attack was very adamant among the colony’s leading men. Contrasting views on the issue extended debates and prolonged any actual progress for half a century. To the Quaker City, defense and militarization were not priorities.
Philadelphia saw little military activity until the mid-eighteenth century, when Fort Mifflin was erected by the British to defend Philadelphia from French warships. By the close of the French and Indian War, Penn’s anomalistic city was just like any other in the civilized world, and proper defenses proved a necessity. As Philadelphia became one of the largest cities in the nation, it would gain within its borders several military facilities, including the Frankford Arsenal, the Schuylkill Arsenal, the enormous Naval Shipyard at League Island, the U.S. Naval Quartermaster Depot and others. Thus, throughout the twentieth century, Philadelphia had a very intimate relationship with the defense of the nation, and its facilities can be credited with lending a strong portion of weight to America’s superior military muscle. This chapter will focus on the remains of two of the city’s important military facilities.
This aerial view of the Frankford Arsenal during demolition in 2010 shows about half of its clustered campus. The Crane Hospital can be seen near the upper right, shortly before its removal.
Frankford Arsenal
SITUATED ALONG THE NORTHERN branch of the Frankford Creek, near its mouth at the Delaware River, sits about 150 acres of some of the Philadelphia area’s most historically neglected, though vitally significant, quadrants. The Philadelphia Daily News reported in 1991 that “at one time, Philadelphia’s Frankford Arsenal was called The Street that Beat Hitler because every round of small ammunition fired in World War II [by U.S. troops] was made there.” Today, the mighty Frankford Arsenal has been reduced to about a quarter of what it once encompassed. The area known as Frankford can be traced to Peter Rambo, a Swedish settler who acquired the land in about 1668. It was established about thirteen years later by Quakers from England. Over the years, the land changed hands many times, and in 1742, as part of a patent from John, Thomas and Richard Penn, grandsons of the founder, the land was given to Andrew Hamilton, builder of the statehouse (Independence Hall), who sold off the land over time.
After the Revolutionary War, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital, new ideas concerning the city’s defense were in wild dispute among Philadelphians. Pacifist Quakers had lost their political clout after refusing to participate in the war, and the new government seemed to plow in like a steamroller. But even in Congress, there were many who expressed antiwar sentiments, and getting the framework laid for facilities for a new military would prove a slow process. The Schuylkill Arsenal was established in about 1805 on the east bank of the Schuylkill River (near the Grays Ferry Avenue bridge) to provide a guarded location for the storage of muskets and ammunition for the country’s military force. At roughly the same time, the formation of an administrative body to oversee these small weapons caches—the U.S. Army Ordnance Department—was completed, and the roots of the country’s young arsenal system were finding their place.
The War of 1812 brought on a strong attitude shift concerning militarization. In 1816, Congress approved a bill for purchase of land for a new United States Arsenal. The property of Fredrick Fraley on the bank of the Frankford Creek near the Delaware River was offered to the military for $7,680.75. Despite the antiwar sentiment of Frankford residents, Captain Joseph H. Rees—representing the U.S. Army Ordnance Department—purchased the twenty-two-acre parcel on May 27, 1816. One year later, former president James Madison attended the official dedication of the arsenal, and a cornerstone was laid on its first building, the west storehouse. With the completion of the west storehouse in 1817, the arsenal was put into operation.
The Ordnance Department, although considered insignificant by most U.S. Army officials, pushed for bigger budget appropriations and more employees. Life and work at the arsenal remained meager and menial, however, and general feelings toward the department remained negative. Some officials claimed that there was never a use for such a department and that it was a financial waste. Others called for the department’s closure or reorganization. Yet despite all its opposition, the Ordnance Department would prove invaluable to America’s armed forces. Determined to make purposeful its role in the new military legacy, the department continued calling for more duties and appropriations. Usually these calls fell on deaf ears. The U.S. military had been manufacturing most of its own small arms, muskets and rifles at its armories in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, for decades. Officials were not anxious to expand these manufactories to other areas, partly due to local politics and shaky finances. Roughly 25 percent of the government’s small arms, however, were acquired through a messy contract system.
Under this system, the Ordnance Department would receive a sample of a musket, rifle or projectile, as well as the precise measurements and gauging to be used to re-create the item as uniformly as possible. It was then the job of Ordnance to seek out a local arms manufacturer, exchange information with it and hire it to produce a given number of items. Ordnance would receive orders such as “twenty-five hundred muskets to be delivered within five years.” It was then up to Ordnance to inspect the items and put them through very specific gauging, measurement and weight checks. If an item passed, it was taken to the west storehouse for shipment. If not, it was modified at the arsenal by Ordnance and rechecked until acceptable. It did not take long for the system to cause frustration and political rivalries on the surface. However, it also paved the way for the continued practice of American arms outsourcing. Private manufacturers such as the Fox Foundry and the Wickham Manufacturing Company were delighted by the contract system; they thrived under it, almost never running out of work. But among Ordnance and army officials, bad blood was brewing. Captain Rees continued as arsenal commander, carrying on the contract system.
The endless repetitious act of measuring and gauging fortunately gave way to new innovations. The practice of working over and over with the same specific product eventually made its identification second nature. Arsenal armorers and metalworkers came up with new ideas, such as interchangeable, mass-produced, uniform parts. Rather than manufacturing an entire musket, a contractor could simply produce barrels or stocks. This gave the arsenal its first break in job function, and a continually growing shift in attitudes in favor of production at the arsenal would prove to be its future. New land purchases expanded the arsenal property, and new buildings were added.
By the 1820s, the arsenal’s contractor base had reached out into several other states. Frequent business with the Du Pont Company of Delaware for powder also extended the arsenal’s reach. It produced thousands of musket balls, hand-rolled them through brown paper for shape and then placed them into wrapped cartridges with 30 to 110 grains of gunpowder. These early paper cartridges, needless to say, were dangerous and inaccurate. The 1830s brought on the presidency of Andrew Jackson and, with it, a big boost to the nation’s military. At the arsenal, increasing bureaucracy within the Ordnance Department brought several short-lived commanders through the facility. The early 1830s also saw the beginning of hired civilian labor at the arsenal.
In 1832, Colonel William J. Worth became the new arsenal commander. Worth desired an independent Ordnance Department, free from the control of the brass. This became a reality, and Worth called for all arsenal supplies existing in other facilities to be moved to the Frankford Arsenal. Having flooded several times, the Schuylkill Arsenal was losing its appeal as a stronghold. Worth had seen the Frankford Arsenal’s location rise on the government’s priority list due to location, size and management. He was soon able to arrange an official procedural change that required all of the Ordnance Department’s powder be proved at the arsenal. In 1833, Worth’s request for $5,778.79 for “the erection of two brick buildings, each forty feet long and nineteen feet wide,” was approved by Congress, and the arsenal received its first new buildings in almost two decades.
Old cannons—captured during the Spanish-American War—neatly flank the entrance to one of many buildings at Frankford Arsenal erected for the First World War.
Worth pushed further, and in 1834, another $16,170 was granted for a three-story building “120’ x 40,’ of brick and stone.” With only twenty-five workers, however, Worth knew that he needed more. He pressed for an additional ten workers but was denied by Colonel Bomford of Ordnance. Whether Worth wore out his welcome with his constant requests is a curious point. In January 1835, he was ordered by Bomford to turn over command of the arsenal to Captain Alfred Mordecai, a top-of-his-class West Point graduate of 1823 and a devoted student of science who, to Bomford’s dismay, welcomed the Industrial Revolution to the Frankford Arsenal. Worth would achieve fame in the Mexican-American War before dying of cholera in 1849. Today, he is buried beneath his large monument at Worth Square in Manhattan.
After impressing the brass with his leadership as commander of the Washington Arsenal, Alfred Mordecai was a great choice as commander at Frankford. During his three years in charge, he accomplished a great deal at the arsenal. He oversaw the completion of the east storehouse and the laboratory, had the entire property’s roads re-graveled and planted the accent trees surrounding the freshly completed parade grounds. He also had a bulkhead erected along the Frankford Creek to prevent the property from flooding. Mordecai had an interest in the geography of the arsenal and took it upon himself to both bulk up and beautify the developing military installation.
The 1852 percussion cap factory was fortunate enough to survive the demolition of half of the campus in 2012. The tiny building was the arsenal’s first step toward its role as a military production giant.
In 1836, the property was expanded to the east again with the purchase and absorption of the former Kennedy property, and a protective seven-foot stone wall was erected along the new eastern edge. It still stands today. Two years later, Mordecai was reassigned to the Ordnance office in Washington, D.C. Replacing him as commander of the arsenal was Captain George Douglas Ramsay, who had rather different ideas on how the arsenal should function. Ramsay was also a West Point graduate and had served with both the Corps of Light Artillery and the Corps of Topographical Engineers. The financial depression of 1837 took away some of the arsenal’s enlisted men, and with them went other civilian jobs. It slowly recovered, however, in the years following.
By the time the Kensington riots of 1844 came a bit too close for comfort for the arsenal, it was almost undefended. Ramsay wrote to the Ordnance Department with a request for arms and soldiers after he was notified by the sheriff of Philadelphia County, Morton McMichael, that “there is a rumor that rioters intend to attack the Arsenal and the Catholic Church at Frankford.” They never did, but the Mexican-American War soon got the arsenal moving at a steady pace again. Although a decent commander, Ramsay never seemed to much enjoy his post at the arsenal. He left for Texas to join Company K in 1845, seeing combat as his only chance for advancement away from the monotonous administration of the Frankford Arsenal.
Taking Ramsay’s place as arsenal commander was former second lieutenant Andrew Dearborn. The young new commander was immediately faced with a sharp rise in orders for gunpowder and ammunition to fight the unpopular Mexican-American War. To meet the demand, the arsenal hired a larger workforce than it ever had previously. Dearborn warned the Ordnance Department that the area surrounding the arsenal was rapidly becoming populated by factories and industrial sites. He recommended the quick purchase of more adjacent land before it was sold, stressing that “these manufactories do not come singly, but in crowds.” But the Ordnance Department was unresponsive.
At the close of the war in 1849, George Ramsay, now a major, seemed happy to return to his quiet position of arsenal commander. Upon his reappointment, the Ordnance Department approved $20,000 for the purchase of the adjacent Ashmead property. The Ordnance Department must have learned a few lessons from the Mexican-American War, as much more interest was put into the idea of mass production and the scientific study of ammunition manufacture. With the birth of American industrialism, the concept of technological advancement was finally introduced to the arms production trade, and the military-industrial complex began to form.
The 1850s saw the Ordnance Department’s ideals of uniformity and specificity of product start on their way to perfection. The department began to find its place as a true government entity, developing its modus operandi and pioneering the practice of complete standardization for all its manufactured goods. Soon, the concept of interchangeable parts was introduced, and the orders the arsenal received became more and more specific in nature. As well as the mass production of uniform arms, ammunition and parts, the arsenal began several ballistics testing programs. Field tests as well as scientific lab tests were becoming more relevant to the young nation’s military, making the Ordnance Department more of a priority to the generals in D.C.
Following the 1848 death of Ordnance Department commander George Bomford, who had held the position since 1812, George Talcott assumed the position of chief of ordnance. Along with his appointment came significant change and further solidification of the department’s role in the American military. The War Department, whose administrators had not yet decided on a single form of primer for its small arms, soon became very interested in the scientific studies being performed at the arsenal. This fateful inquiry marked an important shift in the military’s priorities, as it finally began to take seriously the science of warfare.
By 1850, the two developed methods of firearm primers were the Manyard primer, developed by American dentist Edward Manyard, and the percussion cap, which had been used by American military forces since the War of 1812. Both of these methods though, had serious faults. The Manyard primers proved too sensitive and sometimes self-ignited, and the percussion caps were too small and were often lost or misloaded. Studies at the arsenal would soon perfect the percussion cap and make it the standard for military armament.
The Ordnance Department, having gotten its wish of becoming a larger, more relevant branch, seemed oddly hesitant to adopt the new technologies being perfected at the arsenal and elsewhere. As James Farley eloquently wrote in Making Arms in the Machine Age, “Marked by a strong conservative streak, army officers seemed to fear rapidly firing armament—as if such weapons would engender a military promiscuity that would dilute control of battles as well as escalate the cost of warfare in both human and economic terms.” As history has shown, these officers’ fears were far from irrational.
As the material and scope of work being done at the arsenal became a larger priority to the Ordnance Department, arsenal commander George Ramsay developed a healthy paranoia about the property’s safety. By 1850, the surrounding community of Frankford was now bustling with homes, businesses and industries, and Ramsay’s concern was addressed in a letter to Talcott: “This neighborhood has become [an environment]…for lawless acts, for many months scarcely a week has elapsed without the burning of houses and barns immediately about us by organized bands of desperado.” His concerns led to the construction of a one-thousand-foot-long, seven-foot-high stone wall along the northern edge of the property, portions of which still stand today.
In 1851, George Talcott’s short but sweet reign as chief of ordnance was squashed by a political revenge attack by Secretary of War Charles Conrad. Talcott was removed not only from his position in ordnance but also from the army altogether. Filling his shoes was Colonel Henry Knox Craig, a Mexican-American War hero and son of Revolutionary War officer Major Isaac Craig. Craig would prove a strong ally of the Frankford Arsenal. With his appointment as chief of ordnance, other changes were made. Major Ramsay was transferred to command the St. Louis Arsenal, and into Frankford came one of the arsenal’s best, most revered administrators: Major Peter Valentine Hagner.
Hagner was a native of Washington, D.C., and had worked at Frankford previously. He had recently been working at the D.C. Arsenal, where he became very interested in—and good at—building custom machinery for the manufacture of a new form of percussion cap. His ideas would revolutionize thinking at the arsenal and bring the first pieces of physical change in four decades to its grounds. Almost immediately after being assigned as arsenal commander, Hagner began working on the percussion cap factory. Still standing today near the Tacony Street entrance, the small one-story brick building was one of the most important in the history of the arsenal.
Hagner also erected a new “French” laboratory for chemical-related explosive studies, a steam power plant and, across the empty property (and away from other buildings), a storage shed for barrels of niter. These buildings were ready for use by 1852. It seemed—whether due to the general changes in technology of the time, the further complicating web of military/political issues that affected the Ordnance Department’s priorities or simply the change of administrators—that Major Hagner was achieving what almost every other commander tried and failed to do: develop a trademark specialty with which to distinguish the arsenal, a purpose for its specific existence. However, he would actually achieve much more.
Protective steel blocks form a blast wall between two chambers inside one of the arsenal’s powder magazines, where gunpowder was mixed and stored.
By 1853, the percussion cap factory—utilizing civilian child labor—was churning out more than 1 million caps monthly, and work on reshaping the caps to fit flintlock muskets was undertaken. The entire workforce of the arsenal comprised more than 1,500, including more than 200 children. Hagner’s hold on the arsenal tightened, and he received funds to erect a hospital of sufficient capacity. In 1853, the Crane Hospital was established as a place to treat the now common accident-related afflictions at the arsenal. Built far out near the property’s eastern border, the hospital featured surgical rooms, a medical laboratory and two isolation wards, separate from the main hospital.
In 1854, Hagner received orders from the chief of ordnance to modify two thousand aged muskets into standard, barreled percussion lock rifles. For this task, he enlisted the help of the Remington Arms Company of Utica, New York. Working closely with arsenal machinists, Remington developed a method of conversion for the muskets from flintlock to percussion lock. This method, which required the use of a specially designed machine, was soon adopted and brought to the arsenal. Hagner had other ideas for the rifling work, however. The major himself developed a perfected prototype of a new rifling and barreling machine, which both improved the quality of the barreling cut and allowed for three barrels at once to be cut. He even attached it to steam power to allow for automatic operation.
The contract to officially produce one of Hagner’s machines was finally accepted by the neighboring Bridesburg Machine Manufacturing Company. Hagner reveled at its success in 1856, stating, “My rifling machine is becoming daily more perfect in its works and more expeditious so that I can promise for it thirty barrels per day of ten hours.” Most private industrial manufacturers at the time, including Bridesburg Machine, declined to produce the device. They claimed it was due to reasons such as “incapability as yet of producing heavy machinery to the degree of accuracy required” and “unsustainable cost.” But Hagner knew that his machine was revolutionary. If private companies on the forefront of the Industrial Revolution failed to create what he already had, it was safe to say—with some hyperbole—that the government really was taking the lead in technological innovation, not free market industrialists.
It took until the end of the decade for Hagner to persuade the Ordnance Department to undertake the building, operation and maintenance of machines for the easier production and modification of arms and ammunition. By 1859, plans for a machine shop had been drawn up, and Hagner was eager to get it built. The successful installation of his cutting-edge system of arms studies and new production techniques at the arsenal inspired a large number of its employees to learn his methods and join the ranks of, as Hagner called them, his “soldier technologists.” But the now escalating tensions growing between the North and South were forcing their way into every crevice of American life. As a result of the heated political feuds in Washington over the dilemma, Secretary of War John B. Floyd removed Hagner from his post and reassigned him out to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Placed into his position as commander of Frankford was Josiah Gorgas, whose short term would seem like a flash in comparison to Hagner’s nine years at the post.
After his removal however, Hagner’s loyal group of soldier technologists, who had learned enough from him to carry on his legacy, did so with gusto. Meanwhile, as the Union army hurried to prepare for war, Gorgas—a Southerner by birth—was offered the position of chief of ordnance in the Confederate army. He quickly accepted the transfer and left the arsenal for Virginia. The frazzled Ordnance Department left the arsenal under the temporary command of Lieutenant Thomas Treadwell, who oversaw its haphazard prewar tune-up. In April 1861, Captain William Maynardier arrived as the new commander. Shortly after settling in, wartime demands reached a fever pitch. The arsenal was at its highest production rate yet, and hundreds of new civilian workers were hired. Work hours were extended, and seven-day workweeks were incorporated.
To make matters more chaotic, the Ordnance Department’s funds ran out almost completely, and many arsenal workers began seeing week after week without pay. The department contractors’ wages were put on hold, and even then there were insufficient finances to pay the arsenal’s employees. The Treasury Department began issuing “Certificates of Indebtedness” to employees, but local businesses were not always cooperative about accepting them, and the local civilian workforce established a quick turnover rate. As the war grew more threatening, the chief of ordnance came down desperately and fiercely on the U.S. arsenals, demanding more output. Although the arsenal was operating at full capacity, Captain Maynardier was called off to Washington, and its next beloved commander—Major Theodore Thaddeus Smolenski Laidley—arrived to replace him.
Laidley was a Virginian by birth and had been a creative, bold initiate since his graduation from West Point. Laidley aggressively tackled the munitions shortage with new machines and, with them, new workers. He seemed able to drown out the pressures of wartime necessity and concentrate on building what needed to be built in order to satisfy the Ordnance Department’s demands, however impossible it seemed. Laidley always displayed confidence, stating in a letter to the chief of ordnance, “I now make only one hundred eighty [caps] per day of twenty four hours. In July I expect to make seven and a half millions, and will add a new machine every three weeks until I can make enough for the whole army.”
This circa 1900 photo shows the Crane Hospital flanked by two wooden expansion wings. Courtesy the National Library of Medicine, www.nlm.nih.gov.
The Crane Hospital was built in 1853. It utilized mostly volunteer medical care, provided by local women. Sadly, it was lost to the wrecking ball in 2012.
Laidley picked up where Hagner left off with construction. Amid the frenzy of the Civil War, he focused on building. In July 1862, he received permission to build a blacksmith shop, which still stands next to Hagner’s Percussion Cap Factory. Laidley intuitively introduced valuable new construction methods into the new blacksmith shop—features like reinforcement steel columns that would continue to hold the roof up in the event of an explosion, as well as the design for the columns themselves. Laidley’s round support columns were made of four long, quarter-circle pieces of wrought iron bolted together at the flanked edges. This method was adopted into many other structures of the day. The new shop also included two forges and a small steam engine.
By 1863, Laidley’s ideas were really coming to life. Due to several factors, including war financier Jay Cooke’s uncanny fundraising abilities and Lincoln’s appointment of ex-commander George D. Ramsay to the position of chief of ordnance, the new building program at the arsenal received its share of attention and financial support. At the dusk of the Civil War, the arsenal received its flagship building. The new rolling mill, completed in 1866, is truly deserving of its historic landmark status. Designed by architect John Frasier of Union League fame, the large Italianate structure was one of only a handful of nonresidential buildings built in Philadelphia during the years of the American Civil War.
Laidley’s 108-foot-long, three-story rolling mill brought a strong contrast to the quaint, almost rural property. It gave the look of militarism and toughness, displaying America’s new abrasive attitude toward combat, and set the design trend for the arsenal’s future buildings. Laidley, however, having exhausted himself gathering materials and managing the construction of the new buildings, was dismissed as commander in 1864 due to delays in construction. Although unfairly discharged, Laidley remained one of the arsenal’s most productive and intuitive commanders. His replacement was Captain Stephen Vincent Benet, who oversaw the completion of the building.
Ironically, by the time the new rolling mill opened in 1866, the nation had come almost full circle in its relationship with war. Once doing everything it could to avoid conflict, the young Union now found itself at the forefront of a new vehicle of war that, by necessity, it was forced to create. After using its ingredients for unbridled bloodshed, the war-weary republic—having longed for an end to the fighting—now resurrected a brief period of historic pacifism. Thus, the postwar years were somewhat disrespectful to the arsenal. The new buildings, after a short span of activity, saw a slowed production factor. The proud rolling mill was used for simple storage, and much of the civilian workforce was cut. Benet surely saw the work of his predecessors being taken almost for granted by a sobered Ordnance Department. It seemed that the Ordnance Department finally understood the intricacies and benefits of the Industrial Revolution.
Having begun with manual labor, the department’s prerogatives—first evolving into mechanization—had now come almost 180 degrees from their origins, to complete industrialization. The concept appeared to take its time settling in with ordnance officials. While the army shyly avoided the undeniable presence of the Industrial Revolution, the Ordnance Department seemed almost afraid of adapting the sweeping new technological innovations that were beginning to wow the world. However, the soldier-technologist commanders who had taken personal virtue in furthering the cause of the arsenal had developed more than enough technological advancement there to pique the department’s interest in creating what we know today as the military-industrial complex.
The years immediately following the Civil War brought the invention of the breech-loading, self-contained cartridge. This would prove to be the first chapter in America’s reign in military production, and Frankford Arsenal was its focal point. These postwar years were some of the arsenal’s most important. It was then that America’s powerful system of industrial small-arms manufacture that we know today was born. By 1870, the arsenal’s workforce saw a short rise. Defying Victorian American customs, many women found mechanical work at the arsenal very empowering. Children and young teenagers were also employed, and in some cases entire families labored together at the arsenal. The surrounding communities of Frankford and Bridesburg had also evolved industrially. Their residents no longer saw the arsenal as a loud, unwanted industrial threat to their way of life. It was, in fact, industry that connected these once very parochial neighborhoods.
In 1872, the Ordnance Department tried and failed to have a railroad line laid to the arsenal for the shipment of its goods. The city refused to allow explosives to be carried via train through residential neighborhoods. The arsenal would rely on the Delaware River as its only method of shipment until the early twentieth century. In 1876, the Ordnance Department selected the arsenal as its single facility for the production of metallic cartridges. Although repair work and other testing continued, the arsenal became solely devoted to producing these new cartridges. Laidley’s testing laboratories were closed in the 1880s and used for a variety of other purposes.
Several new buildings were erected in the 1880s, including a series of ballistic-testing laboratories and storage buildings. The rolling mill was converted again, this time into a cartridge factory. With the workforce again at a low and a huge drop in contract orders, more focus was given to the grounds and buildings themselves. Gardens were planted about the property, and buildings received maintenance and cosmetic work. The eastern edge of the property, still very rural, was occupied by the arsenal’s farm, barns and stables. In these peacetime decades, it was one of the most active portions of the campus. The dull monotony of life at the arsenal began to dissipate, however, when the Ordnance Department turned its interest to the study of powder chemistry.
The 1890s were the thickest years of the arsenal’s relationship with the Du Pont Chemical Company of Delaware. Just prior to the Spanish-American War, great advancements were made in the field of smokeless gunpowder. The arsenal’s new powder and chemical inspector, Captain John Pitman, helped perfect the new, clean-burning powder. Further testing led to a more moisture-resistant mixture, which was immediately of interest to the navy. According to author James J. Farley, by the turn of the twentieth century “the Frankford Arsenal had become the center for explosives testing in the United States.” Thanks partly to the chemical advancements made there, the war was over in only a week.
The Ordnance Department received all the pep talk it needed upon the close of the war, and the testing program at the arsenal only expanded. During this postwar fervor, the arsenal received a host of ornate Spanish cannons that were captured during the war. They were infused into the façades of several buildings, set in walls beside exterior doors and windows. The new types of small arms being introduced into the military, along with new forms of weaponry altogether—such as reciprocating, mounted antiaircraft and seacraft guns—required a completely different operational tactic. No longer could battlefield targeting be achieved with sight alone. Very specific measurements and calculations—necessary to properly aim and fire some of the new arms—required the use of special instruments. The arsenal was also in charge of designing, testing and producing these tools and sights.
The Crane Hospital’s surgical room still retains its decorative fireplace in this 2007 photo. The layers of paint on the original door have peeled into interesting shapes.
Considered the arsenal’s architectural highlight, John Frazer’s 1865 cartridge rolling mill was one of only a few structures built in Philadelphia during the Civil War.
America’s hastened decision to enter World War I in 1917 would affect the arsenal more physically than any other single event in its history. An expansive new plan of buildings inflated the arsenal’s acreage, adding another one-third of the current size to the property’s northern end, beyond the old stone wall. Dozens of new buildings were erected rather quickly and were ready for use by the end of 1917. Within these buildings were mass-produced millions of artillery shells, magazines and cartridges, not to mention the powder required to fire these projectiles. Millions of other products were tested and proved, such as helmets, vehicle shields and armored cars. During the war years, the arsenal shipped out more than 100,000 shells per month and produced more than 60 million rounds of small ammunition per year.
As with many large industrial sites during the war, the arsenal filled the cuts in its civilian workforce with hundreds of women. Before “Rosie the Riveter,” women at the arsenal worked in powder magazines, filling rounds with gunpowder and applying percussion caps. They also worked as welders, pressers and assemblers. By 1918, almost 40 percent of the arsenal’s workforce of six thousand were women. No longer relying on German-made precision optical glass for gun sights, the Ordnance Department contracted the local firm of Heller and Brightly, whose employees also worked at the arsenal, to aid in the production of sight glass. Between January 1917 and November 1918, the arsenal produced 232 million rounds of ammunition—virtually every last round used by army and navy aircraft during the year. The arsenal was also the exclusive maker of incendiary and armor-piercing rounds for navy ships.
The rolling mill’s shift bell was meant to signal work shifts and other events at the arsenal. It would have easily been heard from anywhere on the property. The embossed maker’s mark reads, “Cast by Jos. Bernhard, 1201 s. 6 st. Philada. 1866.”
The design and placement of the rolling mill’s main stairwell is a good example of the bold yet restrained look of Philadelphia’s Victorian military architecture.
Immediately following the war, a new primer (Frankford Arsenal #70) was developed. Work began to slow, however, and the production of ammunition came to an abrupt stop. Construction of new buildings had also halted by 1922, and the arsenal resumed its role as an innovator, focused on realizing new air defense technology. Its research capabilities became more of a priority during the 1920s. By the 1930s, the spirit of science was taking charge at the arsenal, and its laboratory programs were greatly enlarged. However, the standard production of small arms and ammunition were given increasingly less attention. Although the property was enlarged for the final time, a few new structures were erected and serious advancements were achieved in the development of the Instrument Department, the peacetime decades between two world wars had softened up the arsenal’s production muscles.
When the Second World War forced its way into American life, the arsenal was ill-prepared for its impact. In 1940, the Ordnance Department rather abruptly upshifted, and suddenly the weary arsenal was responsible for the manufacture of all U.S. military ammunition. By 1942, it had produced and shipped more than seventy thousand tons of product. A new itinerary was introduced for the Second World War by the War Department that helped America’s industrial beasts work together to defeat the biggest enemy it had ever encountered. The Government Owned-Contractor Operated Plan (GO-CO) allowed the arsenal to instruct representatives from other government-contracted manufacturers—such as Bendix, Eastman-Kodak, Westinghouse and Winchester—to produce and gauge its designs. Given blueprints, gauges, special instruments and calculations, these representatives returned to their companies, which were quickly outproducing the opposition.
When the biggest conflict in history was finally over, the arsenal found itself without its minerals. Having given away all of its innovations to win the war, the campus of more than two hundred buildings emerged somehow less coveted. It continued to do its duty of producing and researching, but the unique heroics that had made the Frankford Arsenal the grandfather of the American military-industrial complex were just memories. Brief revivals in production for the Korean War and Vietnam were the last spikes of life for the century-and-a-half-old arsenal. Its workforce thinned out, its equipment and facilities were transferred or removed and, by the bicentennial year of 1976, the Defense Department had announced the arsenal’s official closure. In 1978, after several ideas for the property’s relocation or reuse, it was given to the city by the federal government.
In 1981, the current owner, Hankin Properties, purchased the arsenal. It became the Arsenal Business Center, housing private and commercial lessees. The eastern end of the property has been sold off; part of it is a public riverside park area with boat access. The majority of the eastern half now belongs to the Dietz and Watson Company. After three decades of use as a business park, half of the remaining campus was demolished in 2012, with plans to erect a shopping center on the site. Today, the arsenal houses the Special Victims Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department, the Franklin Town Charter School, the Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts Company and several other businesses. Several of its structures, such as the rolling mill and percussion cap factory, as well as the original parade grounds and surrounding buildings, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and await reuse. With most of its remaining buildings currently vacant, it looks hopeful that the arsenal’s rich history will be enjoyed by future generations through the continued preservation efforts of its owner.
Philadelphia Naval Shipyard
Although constructed in the early 1940s, the soldiers’ barracks at the navy yard appears far more aged. Its dormitories hosted thousands of enlisted men until the 1990s.
PHILADELPHIA IS TRULY LUCKY to have had the presence of its naval shipyard on League Island. The former swampland at the extreme southern tip of Philadelphia was considered an unimportant, unwanted appendage of the city. Running one league in length from east to west, League Island has proven itself one of America’s most important landmasses. The League Island Navy Yard was the only freshwater naval facility in the country, and it was once geographically the largest naval shipbuilder in the world. By the mid-eighteenth century, at least three of the thirteen original colonies had already constructed forts and warships for their own defense. Philadelphia’s was the largest port in the colonies. Its many shipbuilders churned out dozens of wooden ships before the revolution. Although Philadelphia was the largest and most populated city in the colonies, the Quaker government, ironically, strictly forbade any construction relating to its own defense, let alone military action.
Despite the founder’s ideals, Philadelphians were divided on the issue. Some were strongly opposed to the idea of building ships for anything other than trade purposes. Others were determined to establish a line of defense in the quickly escalating conflict with France. The sheepish proprietors learned a bitter lesson, however, and Quaker pacifism began to give way to fearful necessity during the French and Indian War. Philadelphia’s first navy yard was thus unofficially established in an area then known as Wicaco, just below Old Swedes Church (current intersection of Columbus Boulevard and Washington Avenue). There, at the ship works of James and Thomas Penrose, Pennsylvania’s first warship, Hero, was built in 1762. After the successful launch of Hero, the shipbuilders of Wicaco petitioned to the provincial legislature to rename the area Southwark, after London’s shipbuilding district.
An empty bunk room in the soldiers’ barracks. Once stacked with bunk beds and alive with the sound of military slang, the barracks today house only pigeons.
The burly reinforced concrete seaplane hangar at Mustin Naval Airfield was erected at the start of World War II and was later used as a department store for resident yard workers. Recently, it has been used as a film set for movies like Law Abiding Citizen, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Last Airbender.
When James Penrose died in 1771, his young apprentice, Joshua Humphreys Jr., took over the business and soon completed the three-hundred-ton ship Sally. He partnered with John Wharton and extended their river frontage. Just as Philadelphia was on the verge of war with Great Britain and new ships would have seemed necessary, work at the navy yard halted. As the Tories and Revolutionaries fought with each other over the course of action the legislature should take, the situation was getting worse. Finally, on June 30, 1775, a bill was passed to raise a militia and fortify the city. Left in the hands of a Committee of Safety headed by Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris, a group of “minutemen” was raised, and work began on Fort Mifflin.
Franklin’s committee was also given the authority to dispense military contracts to local shipyards for warships. Enlisting the out-of-work shipwrights of Kensington and Southwark, contracts were given to several shipyards along the Delaware, including the Penrose shipyard. After only months of construction, the contracted yards produced thirteen armed ships, and Franklin handed over to the Pennsylvania Assembly his calculated costs. But most thought the ships far too weak to withstand a British attack and scolded Franklin for his underwhelming efforts. The great American genius, however, was not interested in matters of defense, for he had far more pressing obligations as a member of the Committee of Secret Correspondence and the Continental Congress.
The lobby area of the former Mustin Naval Airfield administration building shows how badly the structure has been water damaged. It was last used in the mid-1990s as a career transition office for longtime League Island employees.
The burden of local defense and experimental arms had fallen to Franklin’s partner, Robert Morris. Morris acted promptly and laid out plans for what would become the first U.S. naval shore facility. Basically a geographical merger of the aforementioned existing Southwark shipyards, Morris’s conglomeration extended more than a quarter mile along the Delaware. It contained several shipyards, a recruiting office, a supply warehouse, a paymaster’s office and an office for a new naval planning board. A new “cannon committee” was in charge of procuring iron round shot for the ships’ cannons and swivel guns. This group would eventually grow into the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance. With his shipyard producing ships officially for the Pennsylvania navy, as well as a steady supply of defense materials needed to arm them, Morris’s concerns became focused on a way to recruit a large enough force of men to operate the fleet.
Local ship captains such as Charles Alexander, Nicholas Biddle and James Josiah agreed to take charge of the warships after some negotiation with Morris. Using his Philadelphia political connections, Morris established a system of recruitment from local militia leaders. A pleasing turnout of dozens willing to serve as “Minute Men on Board the Boats when required” eased Morris’s mind, if only briefly. During the long, hot summer of 1775, the Continental Congress painfully debated over whether or not to establish a national navy. Many were opposed to the idea, citing financial constraints. Maryland delegate Samuel Chase voiced his opinion rather bluntly: “It is the maddest idea in the world to think of building an American fleet, as we would mortgage the whole continent.”
The debate roared on throughout the summer, and Congress finally agreed to fund the construction of two armed warships. But by October, British ships had become a more frequent sight along the coast, and Congress began to feel the squeeze. It approved a new naval committee, which included John Adams and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, but did not include a Pennsylvania representative. After the new committee tried and failed several times to obtain four armed warships, it finally turned to the official president of the Pennsylvania Defense Committee, Benjamin Franklin. Perhaps as a shy rebuttal for not being included in the Continental naval committee, Franklin’s maneuvering sealed the fate of the new Continental navy, as well as its role in Philadelphia’s history. His ingenious agreement with Pennsylvania’s rowdy privateers created legal pirates who were willing to fight the British.
Robert Morris’s still new Pennsylvania naval shipyard embraced its important role as one of the first shipyards to officially produce watercraft for the U.S. Navy. The old Pennsylvania Defense Committee had no trouble acquiring the navy’s first nine ships, two of which were purchased from old Philadelphia merchants. Originally built by the old Pennsylvania Defense Committee, the four-hundred-ton brig Black Prince was acquired and renamed Alfred by its new commander, Philadelphia ship master John Barry. The ship received a thorough overhaul and reinforcement and was equipped with twenty nine-pound and ten six-pound cannons.
Congress next acquired the aforementioned Penrose and Wharton ship Sally, which was renamed Columbus and received twenty-eight guns. In November 1775, the 112-ton brig Defiance was obtained, strengthened, fitted with sixteen cannons and renamed Andrea Doria. In December, the nation’s first fleet of warships was ready for sail down the icy Delaware. Meanwhile, the leading force behind the organization of the new fleet, Robert Morris, was pushing the importance of his position with the new Congress and asking for a salary. He was elected a Pennsylvania congressman and then became chairman of Congress’s Secret Committee of Commerce. Morris used his clout with Congress to put more attention (and money) into its naval interests. This ensured that Philadelphia’s shipbuilding community of Southwark would only strengthen its reign on the Continental navy.
However, differences with Congress over how best to protect Morris’s precious fleet on the Delaware from an inevitable British attack ate away at their relationship. When Washington’s famous surprise attacks at Trenton and Princeton in late 1776 caused the British to focus more efforts there, it was thought that the ships, and possibly even Philadelphia, were safe from an attack. Unfortunately, by 1777, British forces had taken the city. During their occupation, some of Southwark’s shipbuilders—fearing execution or imprisonment—continued to work on their ships, but for the British navy. Ironically, after British forces departed Philadelphia in 1778, they were all hanged for treason by the Continental Congress.
After the conflict had ended, and Philadelphia had hosted the Constitutional Convention, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s plan for the regional dispersal of the new nation’s vital ingredients designated the Mid-Atlantic as its center of “dockyards and arsenals.” But contracts for naval ships went out to shipbuilders up and down the coast, from Massachusetts to Georgia. It was clear that the old Southwark shipyards had lost their hold on the nation’s naval interests. They did continue business as usual, however, and launched the General Greene in 1792. President Washington raised the production of ships after the Philadelphia-built President, along with ten other ships, were captured by the Barbary State of Algiers.
The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard operated at an up-and-down pace over the course of the next half century. In 1861, its eager new commander, Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, prepared the yard for the great country’s war with itself. But the impact was not what he was expecting. Du Pont, of the wealthy Delaware family, frantically juggled the constant, unwanted technicalities that came with the oncoming conflict. The endless supply of damaged ships that flowed into the shipyard for repair proved too much for it to handle by the end of the war. The area surrounding the Southwark shipyard was approaching its full industrial horsepower, as factories and businesses squeezed the tiny property in, making access exceedingly more difficult.
What became abundantly clear was that the region needed a new government naval facility. This meant that Philadelphia would once again have to fight for itself against other states that recognized the financial and political gain that came with hosting a navy yard. City officials immediately offered up its unwanted appendage—League Island—to the government for use as a new navy yard. However, Congress did not seem in favor of a site in crowded Philadelphia and eyed more closely locations in New London, Connecticut, and Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. Throughout the Civil War, Philadelphia urged Congress to take possession of the swampy nest of mosquitoes at its southern tip, but the political process dragged on.
By the war’s end in 1865, the Navy Department had a dozen warships ready for repair docked along the muddy edge of League Island, but Congress had still not officially accepted the site. After finally agreeing to visit the site personally and seeing what had turned into several dozen ships and ironclads already docked, the assistant secretary of the navy agreed to accept Philadelphia’s offer. But further political fighting shredded the idea. It was not until 1874 that a serious decision to occupy League Island as a naval shipyard was at last reached, and it was not until 1876 that the Navy Department officially named it as government property.
Before its fill of dredged earth from the former Smith’s and Burlington Islands, the eastern half of League Island had been nothing but swampy, buggy marshlands. After the fill, its man-made flatland was almost useless. But when aviation took the country by storm in the first decade of the twentieth century, League Island’s endless open land became immediately recognized as a perfect flying field. As early as 1910, the Aero Club of Pennsylvania laid a runway and built a small hangar there. Soon after, the navy built a receiving station, temporary barracks and a hospital, all for quarantined sailors who returned with influenza and other contagious diseases.
The First World War changed everything on the island. American armed forces, although advanced in tactical combat, still clung to the basic principals of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century warfare. Forming lines and advancing into volleys of rounds was finally starting to be seen as perhaps not the best method of military action. New strategies combined with new technologies led to new attitudes about war, as well as new fears. With the largest and most experienced armies on earth doing battle with one another for control of Europe, World War I was not surprisingly seen as the “war to end all wars.” And in 1917, when the fighting finally forced a very disinterested America to join the Allied forces, no form of military technology was overlooked. The new concept of flying machines was definitely one that piqued the military’s interest.
Every aviation company and manufacturer of airplanes and nautical parts in the country was put to use building bombers and transport planes for the army. The navy, too, pressed the importance of its need for aircraft and put in orders for a small number of planes. It was decided, however, that the tiny number of aircraft requested by the navy would take a backseat to the army’s much larger orders, and contracts for the private manufacture of seaplanes for the navy were cancelled. As a result, naval officials began developing means for the navy to erect its own aircraft. Headed by the efforts of aviation captain Henry Croskey Mustin and Marine Corps aviator Alfred A. Cunningham, eastern League Island became Philadelphia’s first official naval aircraft facility. The navy’s new venture of building small seaplanes and flying boats finally took shape on July 27, 1917, with the opening of the Mustin Naval Air Facility, named for the most adamant champion of its cause.
Mustin’s impressive plea to navy officials must have done the trick, as the new airfield was granted more than $2 million for construction. The navy, grudgingly, would have to share League Island with the new airfield. However, logistics quickly forced its cooperation. Several buildings were erected by 1918, including a new hangar, a seven-story aircraft production factory, two single-story barracks, an administration building, a radio communication tower and several other structures. Soon after these buildings opened, the island’s need for more power became apparent. The power plant on the west side of the island was not sufficient for the existing navy yard buildings as well as the new ones. The Philadelphia Electric Company was called on to build a new power plant, which sits just south of the former Mustin Airfield administration building (naval headquarters). The small, Windrim and Elgin–designed generating plant contained two Westinghouse Turbines and was just over capacity.
The First World War also kept the field of naval weaponry on the front burner of American military priorities. New advancements in ammunition and powder manufacture at Frankford Arsenal brought on more weapon-based programs at the Navy Yard. New moisture-resistant powder was tested, and locally manufactured mounted guns were installed and tested aboard hundreds of ships. More than eleven thousand workers pushed the yard’s output to record numbers. It does not seem odd then, that the armistice of 1918 was a sobering slap for employees, shaking them out of their monotonously weary routines. For a brief period, the yard’s output slowed almost to a stop. But by 1919, it had sprung up fast, surpassing even wartime production.
By 1920, the necessity of Mustin Field was proving undeniable. More funds were granted for the erection of a testing laboratory where more aspects of flight could be studied. As the aircraft factory enlarged, the testing facility took on bigger and bolder experimental projects. Naval projects were worked on as well, such as the conversion of old coal-powered engine systems to more efficient oil-burning systems. League Island was in its best dress for the city’s sesquicentennial celebration in 1926. The swamplands just to its north were filled in and beautified for use as the main grounds of the exhibition. Residential development quickly followed, and League Island was no longer separated from mainland Philadelphia. The southwestern portion of the sesqui grounds still exists today as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park.
After the first blows of the Great Depression, the navy yard received its biggest boost yet under Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1934, the Vinson-Trammell Naval Construction Act poured funding and purpose into the yard. By 1938, it had produced more than fifteen new ships. But by that time it was also realized that the yard’s pace was far too slow to even make a dent in the looming German and Japanese forces. In 1939, after the invasion of Poland, the navy yard assumed full mobilization. By November, workers at the yard had recommissioned forty-five Destroyers. President Roosevelt’s tour of League Island in 1940 impressed the busy man, who promised the city $4 million to expand the yard. He also added eleven thousand new jobs at the yard and erected the Penrose Housing Project for yard workers.
The immense roof of building 624 appears at first glance to be a ground-level landscape, although it is, in fact, nine tall stories above the ground. Although the largest remaining structure on League Island, the building was constructed in just several months for the Second World War.
A new dry dock was added in 1941, and on it was built the forty-five-thousand-ton battleship Wisconsin. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the yard issued blackout policies, where all lights were turned off at night to deter bombing raids. The Mustin Naval Aircraft Facility employed more than 25 percent of the total workforce, and once again, women filled thousands of positions throughout League Island. A proposition by navy commanders to use German prisoners of war for labor at the navy yard was very seriously considered before being refused. League Island also experienced tension when thousands of “nonwhite” employees were allowed to work at the yard during the war. Many of its workers picketed, went on strike and sometimes used violence to express their disapproval of the new interracial, unisex policies.
By 1943, the civilian workforce on League Island had swelled to 58,434, its peak. The daily commutes of this many people to and from the yard created new problems. Soon work was underway on several barracks, which sprang up with amazing speed. The barracks were expanded several times before the end of the war. The architectural firm Zanzinger and Borie intuitively designed and quickly built the General Storehouse (building 624) in 1942. Its simple construction method allowed for easy expansion. A year later, it was doubled in size, nearly reaching an impressive 500,000 square feet. More than two dozen new structures had been added by the end of 1944.
At the close of the war, thousands of men and women, civilian and personnel, were employed at the yard. Although its workforce shrunk significantly after the war, more than one thousand still lived on site. Postwar sociological advancements pushed the old military style of housing its workers in large barracks out of popular consensus. New row homes were built after the war on a portion of Mustin Field. Ordinary row homes, identical to those simultaneously filling up the northeast, provided a real sense of home life for PNSY workers. By 1960, more than one thousand employees and their families were living on the site, and public relations efforts strengthened the yard’s relationship with Philadelphia.
The Cold War played tricks on League Island. Although no fighting took place, national politics was not on the side of large industrial naval shipyards. Financial, social and technological changes in Washington, D.C., were foreboding to employees and advocates of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. They saw a threat to their lives’ work, and when some in the Kennedy administration advised the closure of several large naval facilities throughout the United States, including League Island, serious fears abounded in Philadelphia. However, when Kennedy himself decided against closing League Island, employees were relieved. But at the beginning of the Johnson administration, PSNY was back in the red. Johnson, too, had a strong desire to reduce funding for large naval facilities, but he was at the beginning of his term and worked the issue at a slow pace.
After property assessments by federal agencies and endless graph and chart presentations, the decision was finally made to keep League Island open. In the end, it was the yard’s herculean size and muscle that saved it. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara explained that the yard was twice the size, contained the best facilities and had the most industrially advantageous physical layout of any naval yard on the East Coast. When President Johnson increased defense spending in 1964, League Island received a physical facelift of new buildings and the refurbishment of its existing structures.
During the 1960s, the navy introduced its Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) at League Island. Some of the yard’s resources went to repairing and refitting old ships, while still holding contracts for the building of new ones. League Island was the perfect location for this new endeavor. Its freshwater dry docks offered the ability to completely disassemble large ships, a process that often took years, without the worry of saltwater corrosion. By 1966, SLEP was at its peak. League Island employed more than thirteen thousand civilian workers and more than two thousand enlisted personnel. In 1968, the yard received the contract to refurbish the sixty-thousand-ton aircraft carrier Saratoga, which was the largest ship to ever grace League Island. Amazingly, the entire vessel was overhauled in just under one year.
This view shows a stairwell in the soldiers’ barracks. Its caged-off floor access relays the strict nature of military service. The building’s echoey halls now only reflect the sound of silence.
In the 1970s, the Mustin Homes were constructed to house navy yard workers and their families. Here, shortly before demolition in 2013, the housing units sit in silence, eerily resembling a post-apocalyptic scene.
Attached to the roof of the former Aircraft Storage Building facing the former site of the Municipal Stadium, the words “GO NAVY” once lit up the night during the annual Army/Navy football games.
After the yard turned out a shiny, refurbished USS New Jersey, word began to circulate hinting at the navy’s decision to subcontract all new work out to private shipyards. This was a devastating concept to most on League Island. The rumors soon became fact, and in 1968, naval officials announced that League Island would direct all its future efforts to SLEP. In 1969, the last naval ship to be built on League Island, the USS Blue Ridge, was launched. Although the navy’s budget was on a steady decline due to popular antiwar sentiment, the business of overhauling old ships saw a brief but profitable rise in 1971, when the yard still accommodated more than twelve thousand civilian workers and more than three thousand enlisted personnel.
Enlisted men and their families lived in a new residential community laid out over much of the unused Mustin Field. It featured a recreation center, a movie theater, a swim club, three schools (including a facility for special needs children), a post office, restaurants (including a McDonald’s) and several recreation areas, such as Coronado Park at the northeast extremity of the island. Coronado Park was reminiscent of any state park. Its gazebos, barbecue pavilions and shooting range were often used by the Boy Scouts. The enormous seaplane hangar was converted into a department store and commissary. A fully integrated bus route was also in place across the yard, with bus shelters set up every eighth of a mile.
As the work-hungry yard received bigger contracts for ship overhaul, its reputation soon made it known as the largest refurbisher of naval vessels in the United States. More worker housing was necessary. Fortunately, land was plentiful at the former Mustin Airfield. Enlisting the help of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), the navy expanded the residential community for League Island employees. At the extreme eastern quadrant of the island, Mustin Homes was erected in the 1970s as a modern, home-like housing development, complete with playgrounds, easy parking and affordable costs. Beginning in the 1980s, five aircraft carriers were overhauled at the yard at a cost of more than $3 billion.
Mustin Homes residents began leaving in the early 1990s, however, as talk of closure loomed. The prefab community was completely empty by 1996. Although other ideas for its use were thrown back and forth, the little neighborhood on League Island never again saw tenancy. During the years of its abandonment, however, the Navy Seals used the environment for training. Its safe distance from civilization allowed them to train “hot” (using live ammunition) and have their way with the flimsy housing units. Aside from the Seals’ occasional visits, the detached Mustin Homes barely saw humans. In fact, its desolate state attracted rare wildlife, such as bald eagles and hawks.
The official closure of the yard finally came in 1994, followed by a year of indecision. The Clinton administration, working closely with Governor Ed Rendell, reached an easy decision to lease parts of the property to private businesses, redevelop other parts and sell off the rest. The majority of the property became the Philadelphia Naval Business Center, offering accessible, strong, historically significant buildings that could be easily converted to house just about any type of business the yard hoped to accommodate. The western third of the island was sold to a European shipbuilding company that still owns it today.
In 2004, the Norfolk Southern Company leased the airfield for use as the Mustin Intermodal Facility—a transfer point for goods being shipped, from rail to air or vice versa. Problems with union contracts forced the operation to close, however, a short time later. By 2006, the entire eastern half of League Island was as desolate as a desert, and its collection of wildlife grew. Still a vital wetland, the area is important to the city’s water table, as it helps prevent flooding. The presence of the rotting Mustin Homes, in the middle of the most barren area in Philadelphia, was truly a rare and interesting sight. The modern community, physically identical to any in the northeast, in its abandoned state was the closest thing to a post-apocalyptic scene one could ask for.
It is almost unfortunate, then, that the homes were demolished in 2013. Today, most of what remains inhabited of League Island is undergoing a thorough rehabilitation. The grounds have been beautifully landscaped into a parklike setting, with benches and scenic views along the yard’s southern river frontage. Local industries like the Tasty Baking Company, as well as international corporations, currently operate facilities at the Naval Business Center. For the sake of history, hopefully the future of League Island is as long and industrious as its past.