The Tacony Disston Community Development Historic District [†] represents one of America's earliest and most significant planned company towns. Established by saw manufacturer Henry Disston beginning in 1872, this 55-block, 158-acre district served as an intentional workers' community for employees of the Keystone Saw factory. The district encompasses 1,053 contributing buildings, one contributing site, and demonstrates a remarkable early example of paternalistic industrial community planning that preceded famous developments like Pullman, Chicago by eight years and Port Sunlight, England by over a decade.
Historical Significance
Henry Disston and the Keystone Saw Works
Henry Disston (1819-1878) arrived in Philadelphia from England as a thirteen-year-old immigrant in 1832. After his father's death three days after arrival, Henry became the family's breadwinner and eventually established what would become the nation's largest saw and tool manufacturing business by the 1860s. His Northern Liberties factory employed between 400 and 500 workers by 1868, producing saws with innovative mechanized processes that far exceeded traditional hand production methods.
The Civil War marked a turning point for Keystone Saw Works. Disston diversified production to include hardware and weapons, and his workforce expanded dramatically. However, the dense urban environment of Northern Liberties, with its tanneries, polluted canals, and smoke-belching factories, along with social unrest including race riots and ethnic conflicts, prompted Disston to seek a new location that would provide better living conditions for his workers while maintaining workforce stability.
Creation of the Tacony Community (1872-1878)
In April 1872, Disston began purchasing land in the relatively undeveloped Tacony area, approximately seven miles from Center City Philadelphia. He hired Thomas W. South, a relative of his wife Mary, as real estate manager and general agent. South would become the de facto mayor of the community, earning the title "father of Tacony."
Disston's vision combined enlightened self-interest with genuine concern for worker welfare. The community was designed to provide what contemporary accounts called "light and air," a stark contrast to the uninterrupted rows of industrial workers' housing being built elsewhere in Philadelphia. The development featured a mix of detached, semi-detached, and small row houses with front and side yards, creating a quasi-suburban character unprecedented for industrial workers of the era.
Deed Restrictions and Social Control
Central to Disston's plan was a series of deed restrictions that remain in effect today. These restrictions prohibited taverns or liquor sales, courthouses, certain trades (carpentry, blacksmithing, tanneries, machine shops using steam power), livery stables, slaughterhouses, soap or glue factories, and any "offensive occupation." These restrictions served multiple purposes: promoting workforce sobriety, eliminating noxious industries and smells, limiting industrial competition, restricting worker mobility, and supporting moral conduct. The restrictions effectively made Tacony a self-contained community where Keystone Saw remained the primary employer.
Infrastructure and Amenities
Disston went to extraordinary lengths to create infrastructure independent from Philadelphia's municipal systems. The Disston-controlled Tacony Water Company pumped water from the Pennypack Creek watershed two miles away, providing what was characterized as "the purest public water in Philadelphia" rather than using the often-polluted Delaware River. The Tacony Fuel Gas Company, organized in 1888 at South's home with Hamilton Disston as treasurer, provided gas service. These utilities not only served the community but also generated profit for the family.
The community featured numerous amenities funded or supported by the Disston family. Disston Park, created as a landscaped buffer between the residential community and the factory across the railroad line, became a central feature with flower beds, walks, and mature trees. Religious institutions were actively supported: the Tacony Methodist Church received its lot in 1873, followed by St. Leo the Great Roman Catholic Church (1884-85, built on donated land), Tacony Baptist Church (1898), and Disston Memorial Presbyterian Church (1886), built by Mary Disston as a memorial to her husband and daughter.
Educational and social institutions included the Henry Disston Public School, the Tacony Music Hall (1885, individually listed on the National Register), the Tacony Trust Fund Building (1893), the former Tacony Club (1908), and the Mary Disston School (1900-01, listed under Philadelphia Schools). A Carnegie library was added in 1905-06. The Keystone Beneficial Association provided illness and death benefits to workers, while a clinic offered free medical treatment and a soup kitchen served those in need.
Community Organization and Development
Spatial Planning
While no formal written plan exists, the built fabric reveals clear organizational principles. Longshore Avenue served as the primary spine, dividing the community into two zones. Southwest of Longshore housed primarily workers in semi-detached dwellings and rowhouses. Northeast of Longshore featured larger single and semi-detached houses for Disston managers and professionals who served the community (doctors, ministers, teachers). This social hierarchy was reflected in building scale and lot size, though the differences were relatively modest compared to other company towns.
The street pattern followed Philadelphia's standard grid rather than introducing innovative planning like later developments such as Vandergrift, Pennsylvania (which employed the Olmsted firm). Streets were initially named for family members: Keystone Street for the business, Mary Street (later Knorr) for Henry's wife, and Hamilton Street (later Rawle) for his oldest son. Disston Street and Tyson Avenue became principal thoroughfares for managers' residences.
Development Strategies
Multiple development strategies were employed. The Disston family directly constructed some buildings, sold individual lots to builders under deed restrictions, worked through agent Thomas South, and utilized the Disston Building and Loan Association (formed in 1868, before the Tacony move). Peter E. Costello, an Irish immigrant who started as a Disston file cutter in 1874, became a significant builder by the late 1880s, purchasing large groups of lots and constructing double houses. Costello later organized the Suburban Electric Company (1891) and introduced the first streetcar line in 1901.
The 1876 Hopkins atlas shows 55 houses completed by the Centennial, concentrated near Keystone and Knorr streets. Early purchasers included Disston managers like Christopher Eisenhardt (superintendent of the saw handle shop), his brothers Nicholas and Conrad, and Jonathan Marsden (master steel smelter who recruited workers from England). Purchase prices ranged from $1,500 for worker houses to higher amounts for manager residences. Rental properties ranged from $7 per month for a five-room frame house to $18 per month for a nine-room brick dwelling.
Architectural Character
The district features vernacular architecture rather than high-style design, with buildings reflecting typical late nineteenth and early twentieth-century revival styles including Art Deco, Beaux Arts, Bungalow/Craftsman, Colonial Revival, Gothic Revival, Italian Renaissance, Italianate, Moderne, >Second Empire, Shingle Style, and Tudor Revival. Construction materials include traditional Philadelphia red brick, frame buildings (particularly early examples on Rawle and Knorr streets), and some stone construction. Institutional buildings employ stone or brick.
Notable architectural features include "Castle Row" or "Battleship Row" groups with military-inspired details, the castellated rows on Edmund and Tulip streets, and varied streetscapes mixing detached, semi-detached, and small row groups. The emphasis on front and side yards distinguished Tacony from typical Philadelphia industrial workers' housing, which consisted of uninterrupted blocks of rowhouses with minimal green space.
Growth and Transformation
Expansion (1880s-1890s)
After Henry Disston's death in 1878, control passed largely to his widow Mary, whose estate managed 365 residential properties available only to Disston employee renters until its dissolution in 1942. The 1887 Hopkins atlas shows significant expansion, with development extending from the original core to include numerous double houses, the brick "Battleship Row" on Marsden Street (used to recruit Sheffield workers in 1880), and institutional anchors at both ends: St. Leo's Church and large manager houses near the railroad, and Disston Memorial Presbyterian Church and Henry Disston Public School at the northwestern end.
By 1887, the district held approximately 400 acres, Disston Park had been extended its full width from Magee to Princeton Avenue, and competing industries had arrived. Gillinder and Sons' Franklin Flint Glass Works appeared in 1883, followed by Tacony Iron and Metal Company in 1887 (which cast the William Penn statue atop City Hall). These developments represented the first significant competition for Disston's skilled workforce.
Turn of the Century Changes
The 1903 introduction of a trolley line on Torresdale Avenue marked a watershed moment. Previously, Torresdale Avenue existed only in small sections, with double houses standing in its bed between Longshore and Unruh. The cutting through of Torresdale and establishment of trolley service connected Tacony to adjacent neighborhoods including Wissinoming and Holmesburg, fundamentally changing the community's isolation. Torresdale gradually became the twentieth-century main street, supplanting Longshore Avenue's historical dominance.
By 1910, development had spread beyond Disston lands to Cottman Avenue. The community had grown large enough to promote anonymity and develop ethnic enclaves, including Italian, African-American, and Jewish immigrants who found work on the Tacony waterfront. The homogeneous, close-knit village character began transforming into a diverse urban neighborhood.
End of an Era (World War I)
The period around World War I marked the end of Tacony's identity as an isolated company town. In 1917, residents formed the Tacony Fathers' Association seeking "better living conditions" in what had become a "growing town that housed more strangers than friends." While Keystone Saw continued operating and the Disstons continued supporting community activities through World War II, Tacony had been absorbed into the larger fabric of Philadelphia. The separate, demographically homogeneous, wholly distinct community that Henry Disston created had evolved into a Philadelphia neighborhood where workers and families traveled throughout the city rather than remaining in the formerly isolated enclave.
National Context and Significance
Precedents and Influences
Tacony's creation drew on several precedents. Robert Owen's early nineteenth-century reforms at New Lanark, Scotland included twelve-hour work days, minimum age of ten for child laborers, and provided schooling and housing. Lowell, Massachusetts (begun 1821) represented the first large-scale American planned manufacturing community, though it housed multiple companies and employed paternalistic control of female textile workers through supervised boarding houses.
Given Henry Disston's English origins, the 1846 creation of Bessbrook in Northern Ireland by Quaker John Grubb Richardson likely influenced his thinking. Bessbrook featured similar social engineering: a completely alcohol-free community without public houses or police force, with every arrangement for "health and cleanliness," a medical club, reading rooms, and hierarchical housing placement. A Philadelphia Quaker publication in 1873 praised Bessbrook's lack of pawnbrokers, vagrant lodges, and ragged schools—establishments that "can scarcely live without the support of the whisky shops." The emphasis on paternalistic social engineering combined with relatively conventional town planning closely parallels Tacony's development.
Philadelphia had seen two failed company town attempts. John Nicholson's late eighteenth-century venture at the Falls of Schuylkill failed due to workforce unreliability and drinking. Dr. Thomas W. Dyott's "Dyottville" (1831) at a Northern Liberties glassworks created a model community combining "mental and moral with manual labor" on 400 acres, with strict schedules, chapel, and housing for married workers. However, Dyott overextended financially, was convicted of fraudulent insolvency in 1839, and his property was seized by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.
Contemporary and Later Developments
Tacony preceded famous company towns by significant margins. It predated Pullman, Illinois by eight years (Pullman founded 1880), Vandergrift, Pennsylvania by over twenty years (founded 1895), Palmerton, Pennsylvania by similar margins, and Port Sunlight, England by over a decade. Unlike these later developments, particularly Pullman and Vandergrift which employed prominent architects and landscape architects (Vandergrift used the Olmsted firm), Tacony represented a more vernacular achievement relying on Philadelphia's standard street grid and typical architectural styles.
However, Tacony's innovations lay precisely in the social rather than artistic realm. By emphasizing "light and air" through suburban-style development with generous yards, providing safe water supply, supporting religious pluralism and community institutions, and implementing progressive deed restrictions, Disston created living conditions for industrial workers that anticipated later reform movements. The emphasis on home ownership through the Building and Loan Association, flexible payment terms, and the company's claim of never foreclosing on a Disston home demonstrated a progressive approach to worker welfare.
Physical Integrity and Resources
The district contains 1,053 contributing buildings, 368 non-contributing buildings, one contributing site (Disston Park), and 19 non-contributing sites (primarily vacant lots). Two properties were previously listed on the National Register: Tacony Music Hall and Mary Disston School (under Philadelphia Schools). Approximately 16% of buildings (240 properties) have been so extensively altered through recladding or replacement of wood elements that they cannot be considered contributing. However, 147 properties are non-contributing due to post-1920 construction or vacant status.
Historic streetscape features survive throughout the district, including cast iron fences, low stone walls built from used grindstones from the Disston saw works, and landscape elements. Disston Park, extended to its full width by 1895, features open lawns, paths, and mature trees. The Disston Recreation Center (established as Disston Play Grounds between 1910 and 1920) includes playing fields fronted by a recreation building and bordered by flowering cherry trees and a historic wall with square-plan corner pillars made from former Disston sandstone grindstones.
Despite changes, historic streetscapes retain the sense of scale, rhythm, forms, and volumes that characterized the pre-World War I Disston community. The district maintains integrity of location, design, materials, feeling, and association, successfully conveying its significance under Criterion A for Community Planning and Development and Social History.
Legacy and Evaluation
The Tacony Disston Community Development Historic District represents a transitional moment between early paternalistic industrial communities and later Progressive Era model towns. While it could be characterized as elitist, paternalistic, and controlling by modern standards, it offered Disston's workforce substantially better working and living conditions than available to most industrial workers in late nineteenth-century Philadelphia. The suburban-style town represented a utopian vision that anticipated many similar efforts and marked a significant step in recognizing the importance of good working and living conditions for American industrial workers.
Several factors likely contributed to Tacony's historical under-recognition compared to famous developments like Pullman or Port Sunlight. Its innovations were social rather than architectural or planning-based. Buildings employed vernacular styles typical of other Philadelphia areas rather than high-style architect-designed structures. The street pattern followed Philadelphia's standard grid rather than innovative landscape design. However, these characteristics make Tacony's achievement no less remarkable, particularly given its early date and its successful operation as a distinct community for over forty years.
The district stands as testimony to one family's vision of industrial paternalism that combined workforce control with genuine concern for worker welfare, creating a community that provided unprecedented quality of life for industrial workers while serving the business interests of America's largest saw manufacturing enterprise. Its significance in Pennsylvania's company town history and American industrial community development merits its recognition as a National Register Historic District.
† Adapted from: Emily T. Cooperman, Ph.D, Senior Consultant, Preservation Design Partnership, LLC, Tacony Disston Community Development Historic District. nomination document, 2015, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
Cottage Street • Disston Street • Ditman Street • Edmund Street • Gillespie Street • Glenoch Street • Hegerman Sreet • Jackson Street • Keystone Street • Knorr Street • Longshore Avenue • Magee Street • Marsden Street • Princeton Avenue • Torresdale Avenue • Tulip Street • Tyson Avenue • Tyson Avenue • Unruh Avvenue • Vandike Street