tehshadowbat
Stacks
Constructed in 1927 and shut down in the late 1970's, this former steam plant looms above Philadelphia's Callowhill neighborhood, a former industrial neighborhood that is in the process of gentrifying.
Rail tracks (served by the Reading lines) ran along Willow Street allowing coal-laden train cars to pull into the building. This coal was burned to heat water which produced steam that was fed into a network of mains under the sidewalks throughout central Philadelphia.
Steam production began in Philadelphia in 1889, when the Edison Electric Light Company of Philadelphia realized it could sell the steam produced from it's new downtown power plant for use as a source of heating during the winter months. Today Philadelphia's steam network (the third biggest in the country) serves numerous residential, commercial and institutional properties in and around Center City.
Since it's closure, the structure has sat as a hulking industrial ruin viewed as an eyesore and blight to its surroundings. A proposal was put fourth in December 2016 for a nonprofit group to demolish the plant under PA Act 135 that allows organizations to act as conservators of blighted properties without using eminent domain.
Stacks
Constructed in 1927 and shut down in the late 1970's, this former steam plant looms above Philadelphia's Callowhill neighborhood, a former industrial neighborhood that is in the process of gentrifying.
Rail tracks (served by the Reading lines) ran along Willow Street allowing coal-laden train cars to pull into the building. This coal was burned to heat water which produced steam that was fed into a network of mains under the sidewalks throughout central Philadelphia.
Steam production began in Philadelphia in 1889, when the Edison Electric Light Company of Philadelphia realized it could sell the steam produced from it's new downtown power plant for use as a source of heating during the winter months. Today Philadelphia's steam network (the third biggest in the country) serves numerous residential, commercial and institutional properties in and around Center City.
Since it's closure, the structure has sat as a hulking industrial ruin viewed as an eyesore and blight to its surroundings. A proposal was put fourth in December 2016 for a nonprofit group to demolish the plant under PA Act 135 that allows organizations to act as conservators of blighted properties without using eminent domain.