"Thomas Dolan's Keystone Knitting Mills." (1866), Hexamer #49.
Keystone Knitting and Spinning Mills, 1861
Columbia Avenue to Oxford Street, and 2nd to Mascher Streets, Philadelphia PA 19122
© Carmen A. Weber, Irving
Kosmin, and Muriel Kirkpatrick, Workshop of the World (Oliver
Evans Press, 1990).
Thomas Dolan was a major
force in the development of textile manufacturing in
Philadelphia. He was successful in building a worsted
industry during the Civil War, he built large knitting
mills in the city, supported by yarn-producing mills in
Delaware County. He produced various goods from men's
suits to opera hoods, and supplied both John Wanamaker
and Strawbridge and Clothier, the two most notable
department stores in Philadelphia. He promoted safe mills
as good business and was instrumental in founding the
Philadelphia Textile School. In 1870 the scale of Dolan's
enterprise was matched by only one other mill, Raleigh's,
also in West Kensington. 1
The first Hexamer survey of Thomas Dolan's Keystone
Knitting Mill in West Kensington is a very early one and
it is not dated; 2
however, the
survey of 1874 3
stated the mill
buildings were erected from 1861 to the present. The main
building, depicted on the earlier Hexamer, was shaped
like a capital E with the legs fronting on Oxford Street.
The building was three story, brick, and some of it
remains today. It has been heavily altered; a story has
been removed, the openings between the legs of the E have
been blocked, and the whole stuccoed. Recently the
western part of the building has been demolished, but the
bricks of the foundation can still be seen. Additional
buildings in 1874 were located across Hancock Street. The
three-story brick weaving and finishing building to the
west across Hancock was connected by an iron bridge on
the second floor to the main mill
building.
In 1875 4
Dolan added a
spinning mill on the block north of his knitting mill
complex, although the year before he was still operating
the Keystone Spinning mills in Springfield Township,
Delaware County. 5
Most of this
building still remains, as well as the addition erected
across Palethorpe Street in 1879; 6
the two are
connected by a bridge and driving shaft. The addition was
used for wool scouring, sorting, and storing, and as an
office.
By 1880 the mills, called Thomas Dolan and Company's,
covered three blocks and engaged in spinning yarn, and
knitting and weaving, both cotton and wool and even
rented three floors of space in the Morocco factory
across Mascher Street. 7
At this time and
for two years past, the "machinery of these mills, [is]
running extra or full double time." 8
Dolan's was the
largest producer of woolen goods in 1883,
9
the year he
pledged $5000 support towards establishment of the
Philadelphia Textile School (matched only by John and
James Dobson, who manufactured carpets at the Falls of
the Schuylkill). Two years later, the Keystone Knitting
Mills were extended further east on Columbia,
10
renting the mill
owned by Ivins, Dietz, and Magee, who produced carpets.
This Keystone Mill was managed by Henry A. Truitt,
probably related to J. P. Truitt, who superintended
Dolan's mills in both Springfield and Philadelphia. The
Hexamer General surveys remarked that the superintendent
was "interested in the profits of the business."
11
An 1895 atlas 12
still showed
Dolan's mills on all three blocks, but by 1900 the owner
had left the textile industry. 13
The Philadelphia
Commercial Museum's textile directory of 1910-11 listed
no Dolan but the Keystone name continued in spinning and
knitting mills from 1910 14
through
1916, 15
and 1922,
16
although it was
increasingly used by other textile manufacturing not
associated with the Dolan Mills.
By 1922 17
the first Dolan
mill had become the Oxford Mascher Realty Company and the
extension of the spinning mill was occupied by C. H.
Salmon, who previously worked with Dolan. Today the
heavily modified, original structure at Oxford and
Mascher is occupied by the Philadelphia Dry Yeast
Company.
In 1943 the Camden Fiber Mills, Inc., listed in a
directory under Unclassified Textiles and Textile
Products, 18
were using part
of Keystone’s Spinning Mills, where they had been
located a quarter century earlier. 19
Today there is a
sign on the corner of the building for Dixon Valve and
Coupling Co., which was located across from Dolan’s
on the north side of Columbia Avenue in
20
1950. In 1943 the
company employed one hundred and twelve persons.
21
1 Philip
Scranton, Proprietary
Capitalism, pp. 298, 336, 411, and 418
2 Hexamer General Survey
#39
3 Hexamer General Survey #770 (1874), "Thomas
Dolan & Co., Keystone Knitting
Mills."
4 Hexamer General Survey #971 (1876),
"Keystone Spinning Mills, Thomas Dolan &
Co."
5 Hexamer General Survey #794 (1874),
"Keystone Spinning Mills, Thomas Dolan & Co.,
Springfield Township, Delaware County,
Penna."
6 Hexamer General
Survey #1457 (1880), #1458 (1880).
7 Hexamer General Survey
#1335
8 Blodget,
The
Textile Industries of
Philadelphia,
p. 11.
9 Scranton,
Proprietary
Capitalism, p. 320
10 Hexamer General Survey
#1949
11 Hexamer General Survey #678 (1873),
"Keystone Spinning Mills, Thomas Dolan & Co,
Springfield Township, Delaware County,
Penna."
Hexamer General Survey #794 (1874),
"Keystone Spinning Mills, Thomas Dolan & Co.,
Springfield Township, Delaware County,
Penna."
Hexamer General Survey #971 (1876),
"Keystone Spinning Mills, Thomas Dolan &
Co."
12 Baist, 1895
13 Scranton,
Proprietary
Capitalism, p. 300
14 The
Philadelphia Commercial Museum, p. 27
15 Department of Labor
and Industry, Pennsylvania, 1916, p. 1274
16 Bromley, 1922
17 Bromley, 1922
18 Chamber of Commerce
and Board of Trade, Philadelphia, p. 37
19 Sanborn Map
Company, Insurance
Maps of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Volume 8
, revised to
1917, (New York, 1916).
20 Sanborn Map Company,
1945.
21 Chamber of Commerce
and Board of Trade, Philadelphia, p. 86
Update May
2007 (by
Torben Jenk):
The only surviving building is the four-story brick
building at 1627 N. Second Street (northeast corner of
Putnam/Turner, east to Palethorp) which was used by Dolan
for "wool scouring" and "storing wool." This building is
being adapted into commercial and studio
spaces.
See
also:
Hexamer General Survey #49 (1866), "Thomas
Dolan's Keystone Knitting
Mills."