Word: disston
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Perhaps “grandeur” overstates Tacony’s legacy. In its heyday at the end of the 19th century, Tacony was a factory town, dominated by the Henry Disston and Sons Saw Works. Makers of the strongest files and saw blades in the world, Disston and Sons was a jewel of American industry. Henry Disston bought up 390 acres of land in 1871, when Tacony was mostly farmland, and built a town on his estate so that his workers could live close to the factory. Like other paternalistic titans, Disston controlled the workers inside and outside...
These days, the mighty Disston factory languishes in abandonment, a symbol of the neighborhood’s decline. A Superfund site sits to one side of the old factory complex that President Rutherford B. Hayes once visited as an example of American industrial efficiency. But now the factories are abandoned and decaying. Within Fortress Disston, the only building with any action is the Day Dreams gentlemen’s club, where the women “only wear a smile...
...high-grade steel that Disston makes in its own furnace has other uses too. Reputedly the leading U. S. private maker of light tank armor, Disston, to handle war orders, put up $250.000 worth of new buildings in 1938-39, has virtually completed a new $300,000 armor-plate plant. Disston saw $1.250,000 worth of war orders held up by its strike last week. Stopped cold was a rush order for armored plane seats for fighting planes now in service in France. Interrupted were U. S. Army orders for armored scout cars, gun shields, light armor plate...
This year Disston expects to come close to its 1929 sales record: $12,000,000 (about two-thirds from saws). With a net worth of about $8,500,000, Disston does not tell its profits, is owned lock-stock-&-barrel by the Disston family, who are hardy, friendly, prolific. Six Disstons work for the company today. Oldest is Board Chairman Henry (grandson of Founder Henry), who presides over board meetings from his apartment at Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford. Head of purchasing is sporty William Dunlop Disston, 52, whose son William, now in the shops, is the first fourth-generation...
Last week President Disston moseyed through his strikebound plant, chatting with watchmen, smiling at a troupe of young kittens tangled up in the heaps of sawdust. He announced that the firm would content itself with presenting engraved Disston 0-95 Masterpiece saws...