Washington Avenue Historic District

Along the north side of Washington Avenue in Philadelphia stands a row of brick and concrete factories that together form an almost unbroken wall of loft buildings. Built mainly between 1889 and 1927, they were erected when a Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad track ran down the middle of the avenue, allowing goods to move directly between plants. The district held textile mills, a clothing factory, a publishing warehouse, a cigar works, a pharmaceutical plant and a licorice works, and their power plants, coal yards and belting companies served them. Several of the buildings were designed by leading industrial architects, notably Hales and Ballinger, whose firm developed separate stair and fire towers and efficient factory layouts. The district is regarded as a nearly unique survival of a work community in which men, women and children worked side by side, and it illustrates how Philadelphia's manufacturing economy functioned around 1900.