Richmond Power Plant

The property, just south of the Betsy Ross Bridge, is not within Philadelphia Park's 10-mile exclusionary zone. It was first mentioned as a possible casino re-site after legislation was proposed that would restrict casinos in Philadelphia from being within 1,500 feet of neighborhoods, schools and churches. While it is still talked about as an alternative to the present SugarHouse site, remediating contaminents such as asbestos would be a major hurdle for development here.

Matt Blanchard

Only one building remains of the once world-famous Cramps Shipyard, and it’s about to be torn down. The Cramps Shipyard Building is a square-shouldered former machine shop that stands with its back to Interstate 95 at the corner of North Delaware Avenue and Dyott Street. Decades of neglect have not effaced the building’s industrial beauty. Banks of many-paned, double-height windows suggests a soaring space within. In May 2006, the owners floated a plan to convert the structure into condominiums. PennDOT’s plans to reconfigure the Girard Avenue interchange of I-95 call for the building’s demolition. Work on the project is to begin in 2009. PennDOT officials say that while the building is deemed to be a “contributing resource” to the Fishtown Historic District, saving it would require the highway expansion to go west into neighborhoods rather than east towards the river.

Seaport Museum

Nowhere does the widespread destruction of Philadelphia’s waterfront history seem crueler than at Dyottsville. Nothing but a grassy field today that was the proposed Pinnacle Casino site, this area on the north side of Dyott Street at Richmond Street possesses no less than three claims to historical fame, all intertwined: It was a famous glassworks, whose output still graces the Smithsonian collection in Washington. It was an early utopian community dedicated to educating its workers in the spirit of Christian charity. And it was, for a time, the snake oil capital of America.
Richmond Street at Dyott Street

Buried in the 1850s, Cohocksink Creek once formed the boundary between Northern Liberties and Kensington.  The stream emptied into the Delaware at Brown Street. Its name, an Indian term with various English spellings, meant “pine lands.”

Cohocksink became a line of defense for the British during the Revolutionary War. Planting artillery on the Northern Liberties side, the British dammed the stream to create a broad marshland, a barrier to attacks from the north.

Sources

Jackson, Joseph. Encyclopedia of Philadelphia, 1931.

Historian Kenneth Milano

Remer, Rich “Old Kensington.” Historical Society of Pennsylvania, http://www.hsp.org/

The toy that walks down stairs was invented on the Delaware waterfront, at the old Cramps Shipyard in Port Richmond.

One day in the 1945, a naval engineer at the Cramps Shipyard named Richard James was experimenting with ways to steady delicate instruments on a rocking ship. One particularly fine wire coil fell off the table and did some usual things. The Slinky was born.

James chose the name Slinky from a Swedish word meaning “gracefully flowing.” In November, 400 Slinkys went on sale at Gimbel’s. They were a hit, and drew more fans at the 1946 American Toy Fair.

Richard James later moved to Bolivia, leaving the business in Betty’s capable hands. Betty moved the Slinky factory to Hollidaysburg, Pa in the 1960s, where it remains today under the ownership of POOF-Slinky Inc.

Source:

Yates, Melissa. “Biography of Betty James.” www.cbsd.org/pennsylvaniapeople

Kenneth W. Milano

Circa 1847. Curving from Dyott Street up Aramingo Avenue

Before it was a street, Aramingo Avenue was a canal.  And before that, it was a well-known natural creek called Gunner’s Run, which marked the traditional northern border of Kensington.

Fed by streams that once branched back past the line of Broad Street, Gunner’s Run entered the Delaware River along a southeasterly curve that can still be seen in the line of Dyott Street today. It was named for a Swedish settler, Gunner Rambo. In the 19th Century, its northern banks were dominated by the Dyottsville Glassworks, and its southern banks by Kensington Water Works, two neighborhood landmarks obliterated by time.

In 1847, local businessmen hatched a scheme to widen Gunner’s Run into a canal, between 60 and 100 feet wide, extending back to Lehigh Avenue. Shares were bought for $100 apiece, the authority to charges tolls was granted, and tons of earth and mud were excavated for what would become the Aramingo Canal. Soon found by its builders to be a useless money-pit, the canal languished until 1896, when it was declared a nuisance and paved over.

Sources:
Jackson, Joseph. The Encyclopedia of Philadelphia, 1926

On the river at the line of East Huntingdon Street
A last vestige of the once-great Richmond Coal Wharves, Pier 18 is noted by boaters and shore-strollers for its elevated rail line, which ends in a up-turned hook like an elf shoe or ski jump.
Extending 875 feet into the river, Pier 18 carries two railroad tracks and was used for the loading of coal and ore. As recently as 1968, the pier sprouted a six-story steel tower called a McMyler side car dumper, which appears to have been demolished.
The now-defunct Richmond Coal Wharves, developed primarily by the Reading Railroad, encompass a mile of shoreline and 12 abandoned piers. It was once the primary terminal for Pennsylvania’s vast coal output.
In 1981, a Historic Resource Protection Plan by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission described elements of the Richmond Coal Wharves site as candidates for historic status, including piers like Pier 18.
Sources:
Independence Seaport Museum
Ameriport (a guide to the Port of Philadelphia), 1968
Historic Resource Protection Plan, Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, 1981