2215-2217 East Hagert Street (formerly Adams), Philadelphia PA 19125
© Carmen A. Weber, Irving
Kosmin, and Muriel Kirkpatrick, Workshop of the World (Oliver
Evans Press, 1990).
Albert Schoenhut began
producing toy pianos in a storefront on Frankford Avenue
in 1872. By the 1880s A. Schoenhut and Company,
manufacturers of novelty toys as well as toy pianos,
moved into a larger building at 621-623 Adams (now
Hagert) Street. By 1901, the company employed 125 workers
at its enlarged factory on Adams Street, and built an
office and "warerooms" at 2215-2217 Adams Street. Giant
dolls, model cannons and other novelties, in addition to
toy pianos, reached a national market. Five of Albert
Schoenhut's six sons joined the business in the twentieth
century: Albert F., William G., Harry E., Gustav A., and
Otto F. A new five story factory stood on the corner of
Adams and Sepviva Streets, eventually enclosing five and
a half acres of floor space and holding four hundred
employees by 1907. However, toy sales diminished after
the Depression and the company declared bankruptcy in
1935. 1
The large five story factory no longer stands; however,
the building at 2215-2217 Adams (now Hagert) Street
remains. This five story five bay brick building has two
pressed tin spandrels on the second floor. The Letterly
Street side consists of another brick building three
stories high, with an elaborate wooden cornice and wooden
lintels and sills. Although a 1901 advertisement
indicates this building housed an office and "warerooms,"
toy pianos were also built at this location.
The building now stands abandoned and plans exist for its
demolition.
1 Philip Scranton and
Walter Licht, Work
Sights: Industrial Philadelphia, 1890-1950
(Philadelphia,
1986), pp. 79-83.
Update May
2007 (by
Torben Jenk):
Demolished about 1996 and now
mostly a vacant lot north to Letterly Street. A sliver of
the party wall remains attached to the house to the west
(#2213). Neighbors remember the building being used to
make furniture frames, but not
upholstery.