Abandoned Disston Saw Works
Along the Delaware waterfront in the Tacony section of Philadelphia are
dozens of turn-of-the-century factory and warehouse buildings. To see them you
would think it's a bombed-out no-man's land of abandoned brick buildings and
burned shells, but no.
The oddest thing about these inner-city factory buildings... No matter how
fucked up the entire building is, the first floor is almost ALWAYS
occupied. I've seen them with four floors of missing windows and no roof,
covered with tags, black soot running from burned window frames, etc.. and the
first floor had brand-new steel roller doors, new vinyl windows, and a business
sign over the new security door at the main entrance. Of the two-dozen or so
reconned, only one was sufficiently fucked up as to have been abandoned. It
looked like a chop-shop inside the steel-and-brick rear warehouse as there were
about a half-dozen late-model cars in various stages of disassembly, a camper, a
motorboat, and a motorless '65 Mustang. The yard was filled with car parts and
pieces, and also had a few trucks, trailers and even a totally destroyed
Winnebago.
I found out that this was the power plant for all of the surrounding factory
buildings, all once part of the Disston Saw Works and Machine Shop, moved from
Kensington in the 1850's. The facility was so huge, the workers built a
neighborhood around it and named it Tacony. Up until that time, it was a
"suburb" and all farmland.
To contact Abandoned But Not Forgotten please e-mail us at abnfco@gmail.com with any questions or submissions you may want to contribute to the site.
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