"Birds eye view of Manayunk, Wissahickon, Roxborough from West Laurell Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia PA (1907). Drawn by T. M. Fowler." LOC
MANAYUNK
© Sara Jane Elk, Workshop of
the World (Oliver Evans Press, 1990).
Philadelphia's textile
village of Manayunk rapidly emerged during the 1820s and
30s, completely transforming a quiet bank of the
Schuylkill River. Named for a Native-American word, or
sound, alleged to mean “where we go to
drink,” Manayunk is roughly bounded by Ridge Avenue
and the mouth of Wissahickon Creek on the south, Pechin
Street on the east, Fountain Street on the north and the
Schuylkill River on the west, and includes the Flat Rock
Dam and the Manayunk Canal. Manayunk survives to relate
an important chapter in the story of the industrial
revolution in America and its the physical and historical
character of is unique to Philadelphia.
Above the early port city of Philadelphia to the
northwest and twelve miles upstream along the Schuylkill
River is Roxborough, one of the twelve original townships
of William Penn's Philadelphia County. Rising away from
the coastal plain of the port, along the East Coast Fall
Line, Roxborough occupies a part of an ancient plateau
long since carved apart by rivers and streams. Bounded by
the narrow flood plain of the Schuylkill River and the
deep ravine of the Wissahickon Creek, early settlers
here, as had others along this fall line from Lowell,
Massachusetts to Richmond, Virginia, found a landscape as
conducive to industry as it was to farming.
Those purchasing land tracks from William Penn at the end
of the seventeenth century consisted predominantly of
Quakers and Germans who established millseats along the
Wissahickon or cleared the uplands for farms.
1
On the eve of the
Revolution, the Wissahickon millers had established one
of the most important flour centers in the mid-Atlantic
region. 2
Ridge Road, now
Ridge Avenue, appropriately named for its path along the
300 foot ridge line between the Wissahickon and the
Schuylkill, served as the thoroughfare for the traffic of
grain and other raw material transported from the rural
counties to the west for process in the mills along the
Wissahickon. Other early roads developed to connect the
mills to the Ridge Road, or in case of the Nathan
Levering, to provide a route from his plantation on the
Schuylkill up to the ridge, connecting him with the
community of Leverington. 3
Improvements to
the Ridge Road in 1812 finished the route to
Philadelphia, creating the Ridge Turnpike, and resulting
in the only route along the Schuylkill River to
Philadelphia.
Early nucleated settlement had occurred in two regions of
the township by the early nineteenth century. Nicholas
Rittenhouse, whose forefather began making paper on the
Wissahickon in 1960, carried on the papermaking
tradition, housed his papermakers in an enclave known as
Rittenhousetown near his mill along Monoshone Creek
(Paper Mill Run), a tributary of the Wissahickon to the
east of the ridge. 4
The other
settlement, Leverington, was situated along Ridge Road
near the present intersection of Ridge Avenue and
Leverington Avenue. Nathan Levering, one of the largest
landholders in the township, had built the Leverington
Inn and leased the cluster of dwelling houses that stood
along the ridge to many of the early craft and tradesmen.
The small village served the emerging commercial needs of
the vicinity and of the travelers delivering goods to
Wissahickon millers. 5
The land between the ridge and the Schuylkill River
remained relatively unsettled until 1819 when
improvements to the river by the Schuylkill Navigation
Company helped spur the industrial revolution in
Philadelphia. The portion of the township which would
eventually hold the mills of Manayunk was largely
purchased by Wigard Levering in 1691. He and his
descendants had acquired significant holdings in
Roxborough, establishing seats on both sides of the
Schuylkill and along the ridge. 6
As active
tradesmen and farmers, they also leased their property
for farming and dwelling. In the 1820s Nathan Levering
was well established on the ridge and by the 1830s,
Perigrine (Perry) Levering, as a carpenter and
contractor, was posed to develop his land and to build
the worker housing needed to support the waves of
immigrants arriving to toil in the mills.
7
On the eve of the industrial storm which was to form the
village of Manayunk, the population of Roxborough
Township had steadily grown to reach 1,682 in 1820. The
character of the inhabitants consisted of the wealthy
millers and landholders, and of the craftsmen, laborers
and farmers. In the vicinity of Manayunk, settlement was
considerably sparse.
Charles V. Hagner, the second to establish a mill along
the canal and a chronicler of the early days of
industrial Manayunk, recalled
“When
the Navigation Company commenced operations at Flat Rock
there were but eleven houses in the whole distance from
Righter's Ferry to Flat Rock bridge, as follows: Samuel
Levering's farm-house on what is now called Sherr's Lane;
next, proceeding upwards, Waldreth's house, half-way up
the hill, back of the German Reformed church; two small
stone houses between the road and canal, occupied by
Benjamin and Michael Tibben, who carried on the shad
fishery on the island; Anthony Levering's farm-house on
Green Lane; the Stritzel house at the head of Church
Street, and their house at the foot of Church Street
(torn down when the turnpike road was made); Benjamin
Levering’s farm-house opposite where the road
crosses the canal; a one-story house nearly opposite and
below the canal; John Tibben's house at the foot of
Hipple's Lane, and the cottage on Rush’s estate.
The whole population about sixty
souls.” 8
As the construction of the Flat Rock Dam and the Manayunk
Canal, with its upper and lower locks, neared completion,
the Schuylkill Navigation Company began advertising the
sale of waterpower. When the dam was finished in 1819, it
backed up the river for four miles and provided a fall of
twenty-six feet, providing for the first time the power
to turn waterwheels on this portion of the Schuylkill
River. 9
Captain John
Towers was the earliest purchaser of water power along
the two mile long canal, constructing a stone mill for
cotton manufacturing near the present Green Lane
bridge. Charles Hagner followed the next year, in a mill
where he “commenced making oil and grinding
drugs...and shortly thereafter added a fulling
mill.” 10
He built
downstream from Tower’s mill. After a somewhat slow
start for the navigation company, sales began to
increase. According to Hagner,
“Captain
Tower and myself stood alone at Flat Rock for one year
after I built. When on the 5th of September, 1821,
William J. Brooke purchased the third power, sold 50
inches, and built a small mill adjoining Captain Towers,
for making flock of woollen rags; the lower part he
rented to William Rowland for grinding saws, and an upper
story to Thomas B. Darrach for making hat bodies. He was
immediately followed on the 14th of the same month by
James Elliot, who purchased the fourth power, 100 inches,
and built a mill next below Mr.
Brooke’s.” 11
By 1828, ten mills stood along the canal and plans for
the construction of six more were reported.
12
While the
earliest mills mentioned by Hagner manufactured a variety
of products, the later wave of construction would
advanced the number and size of textile mills,
particularly of mechanized textile manufacturing. The
situation along the canal in Manayunk provided a location
away from the established textile regions of
Philadelphia, thereby allowing the cotton manufacturers
to more easily construct mills equipped with
“labor-saving devices,” predominantly the
spinning throstle and the powerloom. 13
When Hagner added
his fulling mill, he “had made by Alfred Jenks,
then of Holmesburg, a number of power-looms for weaving
satinets. These were the first power-looms ever used in
Pennsylvania for weaving woollen goods.”
14
Away from the
eyes of the handloom weavers of Kensington, the new
textile mills of Manayunk initiated the industrial
revolution of the Philadelphia textile industry.
Of the ten mills operating on the canal in 1828, five
large cotton mills would employ half of Manayunk’s
875 residents. They included Richards, Rush and Company,
with 3,000 spindles and 60 powerlooms; Mr. Rising with
2,000 spindles; Mr. Morris with more than 3,000 spindles,
Mr. McDowell with 2,000 spindles and; Borie, Laguerenne
and Kempton with 4,000 spindles, employing 200 hands and
producing twenty yards of cotton per week.
15
When Mr. Borie
boasted in 1832 that he had the largest cotton factory in
Pennsylvania, Joseph Ripka, having acquired Captain
Tower's and Mr. Brooke's millseats, had equal if not more
to claim. With 7,176 spindles, 224 powerlooms, and 300
hands, his Silesia Manufactory, consisting of four mill
buildings, was one of the largest textile enterprises in
America. 16
The mill town of
Manayunk had emerged from what had been a pastoral
meadowland only a few years earlier.
“A
flourishing and populous village has risen up suddenly
and where we but lately paused to survey the simple
beauties of the landscape... the eye is arrested by the
less romantic operations of a manufacturing community,
and the ear filled with the noise of ten thousand
spindles.” 17
The growing textile production in this new mill town
along the Schuylkill attracted families of immigrants
from the English, Irish, and German textile regions.
Already familiar with mechanized textile mills and
the accompanying working conditions, this workforce could
literally step from the boat to the mill. The Manayunk
textile mill owners actively sought the pool of immigrant
labor because it offered another commodity they
especially desired, that of the unskilled hands found in
the women and children. As a bonus to the owners, older
boys and men experienced with the mechanics of the
spinners, carders, and mules, were available for the
choosing. Families crossed the Atlantic specifically for
work in Manayunk and its members, often as young as age
seven, entered the mill. The new mill town also drew a
population of experienced workers from various American
textile mills. 18
The population increased dramatically, as did the
physical appearance of the Schuylkill River bank.
According to Hagner, the census taken in 1827 by Mr.
Vancleaf, the pastor of the German Reformed Church, found
a total of 1,098 residents, consisting of 147 families
with 224 men, 306 women, 282 boys, and 266 girls. Hagner
made his own count in November of 1831, between Domino
Road to Shurs Lane, and tabulated “317 dwellings
and nearly double the population in that short
period.” In November 1836 the census was taken
again, this time by an assessor, who found “number
of dwellings 541; white males 1420, females 1729; colored
males 16, females 10—total 3175.”
19
The rapid flow of textile workers into the region had
resulted in a flurry of construction, as worker housing
crossed the floodplain and began to climb the hills.
Manayunk had begun to attract another force of worker, as
skilled tradesmen and laborers came to the village to
build the houses and churches, expand the mills, improve
the roads, and in 1830, lay the track for the
Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad.
While the Schuylkill Navigation effort had spurred
industrial development along this bank of the Schuylkill
River and the availability of cheap labor fueled its
growth, the demand for the cotton goods produced in
Manayunk brought about continued expansion. Competition
for lucrative markets in the southern states, the
Caribbean, and Central and South America, compelled the
mill owners to invest in the most advanced labor saving
devices and to take advantage of their workforce.
Powerlooms and spinning throstles reduced the number of
skilled workmen needed to work in the mills. Unskilled
women and children came very cheaply. With a lack of
child labor laws and no regulation of the length of the
workday, the young seven year olds labored along with
their siblings and mothers for six days each week, the
workday varying in length from eleven to fourteen hours.
“Although
a reference to factories as ‘hell on earth’
had first been made with regard to the mills of
Manchester, it applied equally well to the early mills of
Manayunk. Working in a dust-filled atmosphere in
overheated rooms and standing and stooping for hours,
Philadelphia workers developed serious disorders and
diseases. The ankles of children and young adults swelled
from the hours of standing, and children complained of
headaches. Serious lung diseases, a type of bronchial
inflammation knows as ‘spinners phthisis,’
were common in the unventilated cotton mills of
Manayunk. 20
With substandard wages, long hours, horrific working
conditions, and the continued threat of replacement by a
machine, the atmosphere for labor unrest was ripe in what
has often been referred to as the “Manchester of
America.” 21
In the years
between 1830 and 1840, handloom weavers from the
Kensington section of Philadelphia attempted to burn a
Manayunk mill after the introduction of a special loom to
weave checks, and Manayunk mill operatives organized
strikes in an effort to shorten the hours in their
workday. These events in the industrial village began the
foundation of the American industrial class structure.
The struggle of the textile workers in the mills along
the canal, as Cynthia Shelton explores in her
book, The
Mills of Manayunk , began to shape a new
industrial society in Philadelphia.
The flow of water from the Schuylkill Navigation Company
canal continued to provide the power to drive the
production inside the mills, while outside the windows,
flat bottomed boats loaded with coal from the anthracite
beds ninety-six miles upstream passed by on their journey
to the steam engines of Philadelphia. The navigation
company’s more prosperous years came between the
1830s and the 1840s, as tons of coal reached the
lucrative Philadelphia market and began to fuel its
industrial production. The introduction of the steam
engine to manufacturing in Manayunk lagged behind other
areas of the region because of its ready source of
waterpower, although the source was not always reliable.
Seasonal changes brought about a difference in waterflow.
Flooding could wreck water wheels and dry spells meant
the possibility of less power. In addition to these
forces of nature, the mills of Manayunk relied on the
navigation company for maintenance of the canal. When it
failed to supply adequate water, the mills slowed or
ceased production. In 1838, for example, the level of the
water had dropped so low that all of the mills lay idle
for three days. 22
Mill owners began
to install steam engines in the 1850s to give themselves
the security of continuous power. The appearance of the
engine in Manayunk also enabled manufacturers to build
mills not dependent on the canal, as James Kempton had
done when he constructed the Blantyre Mills across the
canal from his waterpowered mill in 1847. A new phase in
construction of mills would follow, as the large stone
structures began to follow the housing up the hills.
The years before the Civil War found the textile industry
in Manayunk prosperous. Joseph Ripka's cotton
manufactory, between 1840-1850, had become the largest
cotton mill in the country, his four and five story mills
stretching between the Green Lane bridge and the present
site of Connelly Container Corporation.
23
As a member of
the first generation of mill owners, his operation had
remained successful. On eve of the war the next
generation to reap success in the mill town had already
begun to emerge. Archibald Campbell had acquired
Kempton's Schuylkill Factory, a complex almost as large
as Ripka’s, covering the site of the Venice Island
Recreation Center. A. Campbell and Company, a
sophisticated cotton manufacturer, also produced goods
across the canal in the Blantyre Mills.
24
John and James
Dobson, and Sevill and Charles Schofield, both cotton and
wool yarn manufacturers, had each acquired their own
mills and had begun to build profitable businesses. The
Dobsons operated north of Ripka and the Schofields in the
McFadden mill just downstream from Archibald Campbell. As
these businesses prospered, the physical appearance of
the buildings along the canal continued to change.
Although several of the first mills were lost to fire,
the balance were rebuilt and enlarged by the second
generation of mill owners. Available land along the canal
would soon be scarce.
Manayunk textile mills, as a part of the textile industry
of Philadelphia, differed from other American textile
centers, especially Lowell, primarily because they
operated under family ownership rather than as
corporations. This structure allowed for more flexibility
in production and in the investment of profits.
Philadelphia textile manufacturers generated diverse and
customized goods, although Ripka, in his most prosperous
time, became an exception. Several of the mill owners had
come to Manayunk as English, Protestant Irish, or German
immigrants with prior textile experience. As products of
mills themselves, many spent years laboring beside their
workers until prosperity allowed them to step inside an
office. Their sons, who would later join them as masters,
learned the intricate operations of textile production in
the same way. With profits cycled into rebuilding,
expansion, or purchase of improved power or labor saving
devices, the owners had direct control of the operation
of their mills.
With family or partner management, Philadelphia mill
owners also enjoyed flexibility in the type of textile
products to spin, weave, dye and/or print. In contrast
with the Lowell mills where only one type of fabric was
woven, production in the Manayunk textile mills evolved
to produce highly specialized goods like tweeds, jeans,
plaids, blankets, shawls, zephyrs, and cottonades, often
within one mill complex. 25
The diversity of
yarn and cloth in Manayunk helped guarantee consistent
production. The owners of mills along the canal became
adept at finding a variety of markets, securing orders
for custom goods through their Center City offices or
through textile agents. 26
This approach to
production prepared them for the complexity of the
markets during the Civil War years. As Scranton
indicates, lucrative markets, the addition of steam
power, and the familial ownership contributed to the
growth and success of the Manayunk textile mills before,
during, and after the war.
Where
twenty-four firms had operated in 1850, thirty-eight were
in place on the eve of the war, and more significant,
eleven of the new arrivals each produced more than
$50,000 in goods during the census year. The scale of
manufacture was certainly rising—more workers, more
firms, more value produced—yet the relationships
among these increases are more significant than any of
them taken individually. Between 1850 and 1860 the
Manayunk work force increased by 66% (1,966 to 3,255),
capital investment rose a roughly parallel 72%, and the
value of output surpassed both, growing 93%.
27
This boost in industrial production and added growth in
the workforce contributed to further construction of
worker housing, as it continued its march up the hill.
The village along the canal had grown into Philadelphia's
mill town. Manayunk officially became part of the city
when Philadelphia incorporated its outlying villages and
townships in 1854.
In spite of technical advances in textile production and
prosperity of the mills, conditions for the workers had
hardly improved. Child labor laws of 1848 and 1849 had
reduced the workday and raised the age of workers to
thirteen, but the environment inside the mills remained
much the same. Outside the mills, along the streets, the
situation seemed as grim. The second issue of the
Manayunk Star and Roxborough Gazette, published in
February of 1859 described the physical state of Manayunk
as shabby with deplorable housing for the workers and
impassable, muddy roads for lack of paving. Blaming
the "The men of the place," the owners of the mills, the
paper prodded them for improvements. 28
Mill owners would
hardly respond. Wages for their operatives remained so
low that almost all the workers were kept propertyless
and had no alternative but to rent the squalid tenements
from their bosses or other landlords. As Scranton
portrays the life of the Manayunk worker during this
period, man, woman, and child had come to rely completely
on his or her boss for a job, a house, an education, and
a church. In contrast to the decade earlier, this
dependence resulted in no relief of dangerous working
conditions and substandard housing. Instead it
contributed to a rather passive labor force.
29
Prior to the Civil War the southern states had provided
raw cotton to Manayunk manufacturers and the Schuylkill
spinners and weavers completed the economic circle by
returning to them a cheap, heavy cotton fabric known as
cottonades, or negro cloth. With the outbreak of the war,
the cycle of supply and demand was broken. Joseph Ripka,
by then producing only one product, could not survive the
loss. He declared bankruptcy and closed his mills.
30
In contrast,
others not only survived, but some amassed huge profits
supplying the government with woven and knit war goods,
the contracts calling for blankets, knitted goods, and
wool fabric for uniforms and coats. From earlier
experience producing a variety of blended yarns and types
of weaves, many cotton manufacturers easily made the
switch to wool and wool blends. In the wartime years John
and James Dobson, Sevill Schofield, James Lord, Jr., and
J.B. Winpenny wove blankets, Edward Holt knit underwear,
and as subcontractors, Bolton Winpenny manufactured
blankets and Sidney Solms and Jacob Heft made kersey, a
type of heavy wool woven for uniforms. The government
work more than kept the mills humming, it helped propel
the region into its most lucrative years.
31
Prosperity following the war and another boom in
construction during the late 1870s and through to the
1880s sent new steam powered mills climbing high enough
up the hills to enjoy the view of the Schuylkill Valley.
S.S. Keely, master contractor, built and rebuilt many of
these stone structures, including at least two for
himself. He also constructed scores of houses, fitting
rows of them onto the tiers and in between rock
outcroppings. 32
The manufacturers building these mills had continued the
Philadelphia tradition of industrial mobility, graduating
from leasing floor and power from established mill owners
to set up their own factories, as Joseph Ripka had done
in Charles Hagner's and Joseph McDowell's mills in 1830.
In 1874, carpet yarn manufacturers Thomas and John
Kenworthy, trading as T. Kenworthy and Brother, and
Robert Wilde were both tenants of Mrs. Stafford in her
Little Falls Mill at Church Street below Wood
Street. 33
T. Kenworthy and
Brother left in 1876 to built a shoddy mill and a worsted
mill at the corner of Pechin Street and Shurs Lane, and
Robert Wilde constructed his carpet yarn mill in 1884 at
the corner of Leverington Avenue and Hamilton Street, now
Wilde Street. 34
In 1880 the Wilde
brothers, John and Thomas, of a different Wilde family,
leased a floor from S. S. Keely's Enterprise Mill before
leaving to build their three story mill in 1884 along
Cresson Street at Ridge Avenue. All four of these new
buildings, which appear to have been built by Keely,
still survive.
Building and rebuilding continued along the canal, as
mill owners added steam engines and expanded to meet
their growing needs. The profits from Sevill
Schofield’s wartime contracts and his continued
success after the war spurred a progression of
construction of new mills north of the lower lock.
Between 1870 and 1890, he filled most of the available
land on both sides of the canal south of the Campbell
mills with four and five story stone structures. When
completed his Economy Mills became the largest textile
complex in Manayunk. Currently the site of Apex Alkali
Products Company and G. Whitfield Richards Company, much
of the complex east of the canal remains.
The Manayunk textile mills, while still producing a
variety of products, had, with the exception of A.
Campbell and Company, switched from cotton to a blend of
cotton and wool yarns, pure wool yarns and a variety of
woven goods. When Philadelphia emerged as one of the
giants in carpet weaving toward the end of the nineteenth
century, the mills in the Kensington section of
Philadelphia, as well as John and James Dobson's enormous
mills complex in East Falls to the south of Manayunk,
provided a steady market for the warp and weft yarns
produced in the mills in Manayunk. As textile production
remained a lucrative enterprise in Philadelphia into the
twentieth century, the mills continued to spin and to
weave.
In contrast to a decade earlier, labor unrest had begun
to affect the relationship between worker and owner.
Strikes in the carpet mills of Kensington had
successfully organized workers, so, when spinners at
Schofield's Economy Mill struck in the mid-1880s, they
began to win concessions. 35
When production
at A. Campbell and Company slowed for the loss of
markets, and Archibald Campbell died in 1874, the future
of the mills teetered. Striking workers may have tipped
the balance toward a demise. A. Campbell and Company, the
last cotton mill in Manayunk, closed in 1880.
36
Children still spent their days as laborers in the late
of the nineteenth century. A study of Hexamer General
Surveys written between the late 1870s and the late 1880s
of twenty-two Manayunk manufactories provided a list of
the number of hands in various factories and textile
mills. Divided into categories of men, girls, and boys, a
tally of each group revealed as many children laboring as
adults. Only one manufacturer, the Heft and Ogle Dexter
Dye Works, employed exclusively men. 37
Thus children
continued to toil in the mills of Manayunk into the early
years of the next century until legislation in 1913
finally required the end to their pitiful existence. The
new law provided the power to enforce earlier State
bills, one passed in 1893 outlawing child labor, and the
other requiring compulsory school attendance, enacted in
1895. 38
The first decades following the turn of the twentieth
century were prosperous years for industrial America,
especially Philadelphia, giving rise to its reputation as
“Workshop of the World.” The Philadelphia
industrial community produced a vast array of goods for
an international market with textile production leading
the rest as the strongest industry. 39
A new wave of
Italian and Eastern European immigrants flooded into the
city, supplying a new pool of cheap labor and arriving in
time to replace the ones that now obediently sat in the
classroom.
In Manayunk, another era of new construction brought on
by this productivity signaled the continued success of
the mill town. Robert Krook Carpet Yarn, Inc.,
built a new factory on Main Street (4120 Main Street) in
1912, followed by Fred Pearson, who grafted a five story
brick mill onto the Robert Wilde and Sons earlier stone
mill at Leverington and Wilde Streets. Up the hill, past
the view of the Schuylkill River valley, the Kaufman
Plush Company constructed a five-story mill complex at
Pensdale and Mitchell Streets, much in the style of
Pearson’s mill, while the Manayunk Plush
Manufacturing Company built a three-story facility at
Umbria and Lemont Street. Along the canal, the Collins
and Aikman Company constructed a three-story
reinforced-concrete and brick mill across from the
American Wood Paper Mill. Manufacturers of plush, a
velvet of cotton, linen, or wool, began appearing in
numbers in Manayunk, weaving to supply a growing
upholstery market. Collins and Aikman sold wool plush to
the automobile industry for car interiors.
40
Finally, John
Wilde and Brother, experiencing a boom in production,
constructed a new mill in 1930 as part of an expansion
effort.
Textile production remained the predominant industry in
Manayunk up to the years surrounding the Depression years
when loss of markets, labor unrest, and the relocation of
companies to plants in the southern and western states
began a slow erosion of the industry. By 1929 the Economy
Mills and the Blantyre Mills had consolidated under the
management of the Dobson and Schofield families and
operated under the name of Imperial Mills. James Dobson
also owned two other mills north of the Green Lane
Bridge. In 1935, after weathering the depression years,
the Imperial Mills were closed and sold in parcels,
reflecting the seriousness of the economic times and the
state of the Philadelphia textile industry. The end of
the Dobson/Schofield dynasty meant the loss of work for
hundreds of Manayunk residents and signaled hard times
ahead for the “Manchester of America.”
“When
some of the mills closed down during those bad days,
Schofield’s mills stayed open. Workers there never
missed a day’s pay. But when times eased a little,
the millhands asked—then demanded—a raise of
$6 a week. “That’s when Schofield rented
Nickel Hall,” Madarano recalls. “He got up
there and reminded us that all during the worst days of
the Depression we had worked steady—because he took
orders at just a little profit to keep the mills going.
He told us he still had some of these orders from
customers who stayed by him during the Depression, and he
wasn’t going to raise the prices on them now. He
could afford to give us $2 a week more he said. Well,
when he finished talking we took a vote on it, and some
few of us went for the $2 a week. But most of the men
voted for the Almighty Dollar. When he saw how the vote
had gone, Old Man Schofield got up and thanked those of
us who voted with him. But then he announced that, from
right then, all of his mills were closed. That’s
what killed Manayunk: those mills never opened
again.” 41
In the years following the Depression the textile mills
along the canal and on the hills grew silent.
Although textile production seems to have dominated the
manufacturing theme of Manayunk, an essay on its
industrial history is incomplete without mention of the
manufacturing interrelated to textile production and of
the other mills along the canal producing paper, lumber,
and chemicals. Also of considerable importance to the
livelihood of Manayunk, the Pencoyd Iron Works, later
absorbed by the American Bridge Company, at one time
provided more jobs than a single textile mill. In
addition, selective smaller industries, such as a wagon
maker on Main Street, a rope walk along Markle Street and
Boone Street, a sizable ice company on the canal, the
Liebert and Obert Brewery on Connaroe Street, a
commercial laundry on Levering Street and others all
operated in Manayunk—no less important, just not
considered for this writing. Each added to the diversity
of the industrial neighborhood and at the same time
supplied the community with a variety of goods.
Two businesses with direct ties to the Manayunk textile
business and both deserving of more study are the G.J.
Littlewood and Sons Albion
Dye and Bleach Works still in operation at Main
Street near Shurs Lane; and the William
Schofield Works , a factory for the
production of machinery and equipment for textile mills,
whose buildings remaining on the 200 block of Krams
Street. The Littlewood Dyeworks began as early as 1869
dying and bleaching cotton and wool yarns. With an office
at 17 North Front Street in 1886, the company processed
orders “in general for mills in all parts of the
United States, but especially in Virginia and North
Carolina.” 42
William Schofield, although not the only manufacturer of
machinery for mills in Manayunk, represents the
interrelated enterprise of machine shop that emerged to
serve the mill community. 43
Begun in 1873,
his manufactory produced such items as willows, pickers,
reels, dusters, grinders, etc., all standard textile mill
equipment. In his two properties at 219 Krams Street and
across the street at 210-220 Krams Street, he produced
his patented machinery into the twentieth century.
The other significant type of manufacturing in Manayunk,
paper production, still remains an active industry.
Papermaking began on the canal in the Samuel Eckstein
Mill in c.1827, near the present intersection of Main
Street and Leverington Avenue. A young supervisor for Mr.
Eckstein, William Nixon, later constructed the Flat Rock
Paper Mill north of Mr. Eckstein’s mill and along
the Schuylkill River. This endeavor established the
Nixons in the paper making business, a role the family
would continue at the same location into the 1920s. Pulp
may be a small constituent of blood, as William Nixon
descended from papermaker Wilhelm Rittenhouse through his
mother Sarah Rittenhouse Nixon.
In 1864, the American Wood Paper Company constructed a
sizable waterpowered mill for the production of wood pulp
to the north of and on the property line of the Flat Rock
Paper Mill. Known as the Manayunk Pulp Works, Martin
Nixon, then part owner of the Nixon mill, became a
manager of the new plant. 44
At the time of
its operation historians J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson
Westcott noted that “the Flat Rock Mills, together
with those of the American Wood Paper Company, adjoining
them on the Canal in Manayunk, form the most extensive
paper-works in the world.” 45
Although the
Nixon mill no longer stands, portions of the Manayunk
Pulp Works were incorporated into the plant operated by
the present owner of both sites, Container Corporation of
America, Inc. In their pulp mill and cardboard container
factory, the company continues the historic use of the
site.
By the 1880s, the upper portion of the canal had two
other mills for the production of paper or milling of
wood. Located along the canal just to the south of the
Leverington Avenue bridge, the Manayunk Paper Mill
produced “roofing paper and carpet paper”
made from “rags, waste paper straw and shoddy,
etc.” 46
The mill stood
along the northern property line of the Samuel Eckstein
mill, by then absorbed by A. Campbell's Compton Steam
Mill. Neither stands.
Across the same bridge to the north, S.S. Keely had
established a lumber yard and a mill to plane woodwork,
window sash and raw lumber on the site of one of the
first generation of mills, the Harris Sawmill.
Production of paper began on the lower section of the
canal c.1828, when the McDowell Paper Mill was
constructed at the present site of Connelly Container
Corporation, a year after Samuel Eckstein had established
his millseat. Connelly Container, another producer of
paper and cardboard boxes, also occupies a Manayunk site
that has had continuous use for paper production.
Although the records are scant for McDowell's business,
he apparently produced paper in one part and leased the
other floors to tenants also making paper or spinning
cotton. 47
In 1864 McDowell
sold the property to William H. Harding, the owner and
publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Harding expanded
the mill, intending to produce “for his different
publications, and he has more recently entered into the
manufacture of wood paper, having purchased for a large
amount, the right from its inventors. His mills are now
capable of producing 8000 pounds a day, wood and straw
both being employed in its manufacture.”
48
Following Mr.
Harding’s tenure in the 1880s a series of paper
manufacturers, including Charles McDowell, a descendent
of the original owner, occupied the mill. Connelly
Container Corporation has owned the property since the
1940s, and ships its two and a half ton rolls of craft
paper across the river to the site of the Pencoyd Iron
Works, the present location of its box factory.
49
Industrial history has continued in Manayunk, as it does
in Philadelphia, but the Manayunk manufacturers can no
longer provide employment to the residents in the houses
that ascend the hills, thus divorcing the community from
its industry for the first time since its beginning. The
canyon of mills that lined the canal have disappeared,
most destroyed by abandonment, neglect and eventually by
fire, leaving behind only archeological remains.
When considering the history of the American industrial
revolution, the Manayunk example of innovation in
transportation, settlement patterns, mechanization of
production and physical development provides a
significant chapter in the study. Sites representative of
the span of industrial activity within the community
remain to help interpret the story. In particular, many
of the generation of mills built off the canal following
the introduction of the steam engine in the
mid-nineteenth century survive relatively intact. A tour
through the streets of Manayunk will reveal a large
number of them, constructed of stone and of brick, and
found in small industrial pockets. A variety of
industrial sites remain in Manayunk, as well, to
illustrate further the complexity of Philadelphia's mill
town.
1 Cynthia J.
Shelton, The
Mills of Manayunk, (Baltimore, 1986), p. 76.
2 Shelton, p. 77.
3 Shelton, p. 80.
4 In 1690 Wilhelm
Rittenhouse established one of the first paper mills in
the colonies.
5 Shelton, p. 101.
6 Shelton, p. 80.
7 Shelton, p. 94.
8 Charles V.
Hagner, Early
History of the Falls of the Schuylkill...
etc,
(Philadelphia, 1869), p. 55. The turnpike noted here
refers to the Manayunk Road or Main Street,
Hipple’s Lane is now Fountain Street, and Church
Street was changed to Krams Street.
9 Shelton, p. 55.
10 Hagner, p. 70.
11 Hagner, p. 75.
12 B. Penrose Pictorial
Philadelphia Collection: Glimpses of Philadelphia of the
Past. Volume 27, Roxborough, Manayunk, Falls of
Schuylkill, and a newspaper clipping “Men and
Things,” Evening
Bulletin , July 16, 194[?]., as cited
in Mildred Goshow, “Material Relating to Mills and
Mill Owners of Manayunk in the Nineteenth Century,”
(unpublished manuscript at the Roxborough Branch of the
Free Library of Philadelphia), p. 4.
13 For an in-depth
analysis of the early textile industry in Philadelphia,
see Shelton, chapter 2 “Textiles and the Urban
Laborer, 1787-1820,” and chapter 3
“Mechanization and Mill Production,
1820-1837.” Also Philip Scranton,
Proprietary
Capitalism (Philadelphia, 1983),
chapter 4, “Philadelphia Textile Manufacture in The
Early Republic.”
14 Hagner, p. 70.
15 Goshow, p. 4.
16 Shelton, p. 58.
17 Shelton, p. 90, quoting
William Young from Samuel Hazard, ed. Register of
Pennsylvania, No. 2, (January-July, 1828), p. 14.
18 Shelton, pp. 95-98.
19 Hagner, pp. 79-80.
20 Shelton, p. 70. For a
thorough examination of the motives of Manayunk mill
owners and the worker conditions and wages, see chapter
3, "Mechanization and Mill Production in the Urban
Seaport, 1820-1837."
21 Manayunk was first
compared with the English textile town during a July 4,
1828 oration presented by John Elkington during the
holiday festivities in Manayunk. See Shelton, p. 55 and
Goshow, p. 5.
22 Shelton, p. 72.
23 Scranton, p. 156.
24 In addition to the
Blantyre Mills, a two-story building remains from the
Campbell complex. It stands on the south side of Rector
Street near the canal and served as a mill and an office
building.
25 Scranton, pp. 52 and
246.
26 J. L. Bishop,
A
History of American Manufactures from
1680-1860 , Vol. 3. pp. 43-44;
highlights the advantage of Archibald Campbell and
Company cotton mill in contrast to the Lowell experience
and is cited in Scranton, pp. 52-54.
27 Scranton, pp. 246-247.
28 Manayunk
Star and Roxborough Gazette , February 12, 1859, as cited
in Scranton, p. 254.
29 Scranton, pp. 251-268.
30 Scranton, p. 159.
31 Scranton. For a
thorough analysis of war-time contracts among
Philadelphia textile manufacturers, see chapter 8, "The
Sixties: War and Prosperity", pp. 272-313.
32 Goshow, p. 120.
33 The mill still stands
on the north side of Krams Street, just below Silverwood
Street.
34 Hexamer General Survey,
Nos. 798, 799, 1591, and 1774.
35 Scranton, pp. 382-396.
36 Scranton, pp. 382-384.
37 Hexamer General Survey,
No. 1369
38 Nathaniel Burt and
Wallace E. Davis, "The Iron Age," found in
Philadelphia:
A 300 Year History , Russel F. Weigley, ed. (New
York, 1982), p. 499.
39 Burt and Davis, p. 626.
40 Interview with Larry
Mason, October 26, 1989. Notes located at the
Philadelphia Historical Commission, Philadelphia, PA.
41 Martin Ezra, interview
with Joseph Madarano in "Small Town in the City",
The
Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday
Magazine, (Philadelphia: April 13,
1969), p. 9.
42 Historical and
Commercial Philadelphia, (New York, 1892), p. 129, as
cited in Goshow, p. 123.
43 Goshow, see chapter 19,
"Machine Shops and Foundries," pp. 124-128.
44 Bishop. Vol. 2, p. 496,
as cited in Goshow, p. 116.
45 J. Thomas Scharf and
Thompson Westcott, History
of Philadelphia , (Philadelphia, 1884), p.
2238.
46 Hexamer General Survey,
Nos. 1678 and 2245. The mill was surveyed first in 1882
and again in 1883.
47 Goshow, p. 89. McDowell
leased the mill to papermakers, the Megaree Brothers,
before they relocated to their own mill on the
Wissahickon in 1844. He also rented floors to several
textile mill owners before the construction of their
mills: Joseph Ripka, 1929-1834; James B. Winpenny and
George Moyer, 1847-1852; and David Wallace and John
Preston, 1854.
48 The
Biographical Encyclopaedia of Pennsylvania in the
Nineteenth Century , (Philadelphia, 1874), pp.
51-52, as cited in Goshow, p. 91.
49 Interview with Thomas
Connelly, October 27, 1989. Notes on file at the
Philadelphia Historical Commission.
Acknowledgements:
A special thank
you to Frank Weer and William Lubar who provided valuable
assistance in the survey work and research. Special
thanks and sincere appreciation to Stuart Dixon and Jane
Mork Gibson for editorial assistance. Thank you to
Russell Fawley and Larry Mason, who enthusiastically
shared the history of and the production in the John
Wilde and Bro., Inc., carpet yarn mill complex. Thank you
to Thomas Connelly for his interest and insight
concerning the operation and history of Connelly
Container Corporation. And to John Bowie, sincere
gratitude for his thorough organization, effective whip
cracking, and appropriate use of "Nasty-Grams." Without
him, our effort would have failed.
Resources:
Manayunk
bibliography