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History of Piers 3 and 5 North:The Piers at Penn's Landing

In 1907, the City of Philadelphia established the Department of Wharves, Docks and Ferries as a divisionof its Department of Commerce to meet the needs of the city's growing foreign, inter-coastal, coastal andDelaware River trade. Besides having regulatory power for the entire local urban waterfront, the new

department oversaw the construction and maintenance of dozens of municipally-owned piers and portfacilities in the early decades of the 20th century. The Department of Wharves, Docks and Ferries builtPier 3 North and its sister building Pier 5 North in 1922 and 1923 as the last component of this particularphase of improvements to the Port of Philadelphia.

Municipal Piers 3 and 5 were specifically designed to: 1) accommodate ships with much greater draw, 2)enable the loading and unloading of more than one ship simultaneously, and 3) facilitate the rapid transferof cargo to railroads, wagons and trucks. The City of Philadelphia spent four and a half million dollars inbuilding these warehouse piers, and they were the last general cargo piers constructed by the city alongthe central Delaware River district. When new, these two double-deck depots were state-of-the-art incargo-handling technology and were actively promoted as such. In fact, they were said to havetransformed Delaware Avenue into the "greatest shipping thoroughfare in the country."

Drawing of proposed Girard Piers 3 and 5,with the proposed Delaware River Bridge in the background.

AIA/T-Square Yearbook, at 107 (1922).

The piers were raised on the site of several obsolete wooden wharves that were put up in the late-19thcentury with money left to the city by Stephen Girard, the famed Philadelphia shipping merchant, financierand philanthropist. (Click here for a photo of these long-gone piers.) [link to first photo & caption of oldpiers in the historicalpics.doc file.] Hence, Piers 3 and 5 were officially called the "New Girard Group" (or

just "Girard Group" or "Girard Piers"). Completed first, Pier 3 was officially dedicated by Mayor J.Hampton Moore on June 29, 1922. (Click here for detailed historic information about Pier 3.) [link tosecond picturePier 3 info pages& caption in the historicalpics.doc file.]

The chief designer of the complex was John Penn Brock Sinkler, City Architect from 1920 to 1924. TheNew Girard Piers were made of steel and concrete with brick and limestone facing, and stand on largetimbers submerged into the riverbed; Pier 3 has some 8000 such timbers alone. (Like Philadelphia's CityHall, these imposing edifices were built to last!) They extended about 550 feet into the Delaware River

channel, which was as far as federal law allowed to ensure safe navigation on the river. Their 185-footwidth represented a balance between the desire for a wide wharf for sorting cargo and the need to leaveenough space between them for ships to maneuver. Several ships could load and unload simultaneouslyat each pier, or a ship could unload at one berth and then load at another.

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Municipal Pier 3 North from the water in the mid-1920s.

Each pier's steel frame was exposed on the north and south elevations. "Turn over" cargo doors, whichfolded upward and inward before rotating toward the roof, filled almost all the bays on the first and secondstories. These doors enabled the direct movement of cargo to and from either deck from any point on thepier. Above the doors, a band of windows admitted light into the cargo areas. Horizontal steel girderstowering over the roof level provided a place for block-and-tackle rigs to be hung. Referred to as "cargo

masts," these gave longshoremen great flexibility in moving cargo to the appropriate level of the pier forstorage. Pier 3 offered about 101,000 square feet of storage space while Pier 5 offered about 98,000.(Click here for a cross-section and interior view of a typical municipal pier built by the City of Philadelphiain the early-20th century.) [link to BOTH the cross-section AND interior picture of a typical pier (&captions) in the historicalpics.doc file.] Both buildings had automatic fire sprinklers and numerous firestations connecting to city water pressure. They also contained several offices for dock and shippingpurposes on both the upper and lower decks.

In the front facade of each pier, two doors for trucks and one door for railcars led to the interior. One ofthe truck doors opened to an inclined ramp leading to the second floor. The center rail door admitted asingle track from Delaware Avenue which divided to accommodate two sets of railroad cars. A seven-footwide concrete apron extended down the sides of the piers, providing a place for longshoremen to work.In the 1950s, Pier 3's southern apron was widened to accommodate an additional set of tracksconnecting to Delaware Avenue. And along the avenue, a single-story shed with loading platforms linked

the two piers by the river's bulkhead. The entire facility, carefully designed for optimal efficiency ofloading and unloading cargo, occupied almost one thousand feet of water frontage.

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Two busy Delaware Avenue views of Pier 3 in the mid-1920s. Note the locomotive pushingboxcars into the building. Today, that is the entrance into Pier 3's parking garage.

The Ben Franklin Bridge is under construction in the top photo, which also shows theDelaware Avenue El on the left and the Pennsylvania Railroad's ferry landing on the extreme right.

After several decades of hard and faithful service on the Delaware riverfront, Municipal Piers 3 and 5succumbed to more modern methods of port operations and cargo transportation. Huge new portfacilities were constructed in South Philadelphia after World War II, and containerization, in particular,spelled doom for the Girard Group Piers. The two outmoded warehouses lingered on into the 1960s,after which they stood abandoned and forlorn along the area that would eventually become known asPenn's Landing.

Planned in the early 1960s, Penn's Landing between Market and Spruce Streets was constructed onlandfill in the late 1960s and early 1970s in preparation for the U.S. Bicentennial. (The site is called"Penn's Landing" because William Penn's ship The Welcome landed in the areaabout where DockStreet is nowwhen Penn first visited Philadelphia in 1682.) Like most other derelict docks and ferrylandings in the river district, Piers 3 and 5 were slated for demolition in the grand urban renewal plans.But only half of Penn's Landing was ever built, thus sparing the two structures, as well as Piers 9 and 11further north. (Both of these were narrow warehouse piers built by the Department of Wharves, Docksand Ferries soon after its formation; Pier 9 still stands intact.)

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Construction of Penn's Landing and clearing of buildings for I-95 in 1968.Like Delaware Avenue itself many years before, Penn's Landing was built

entirely on landfill. Note Piers 3 and 5 at the upper right.(Click here for a "before" picture of the area.) [link to overheadshot.jpg.]

Slowly, the rough and tumble dock area along the Delaware River was transformed into an appealingdestination for Philadelphians and tourists seeking recreational activities. Instead of cargo ships, cruiseships and pleasure boats began plying the Delaware. As Penn's Landing became increasingly popular,adaptive reuse of the Girard Piers was sought. Meanwhile, they were added to the National Register ofHistoric Places in 1983 in recognition of their early art deco architecture. Soon after this, in a stroke ofgenius and a leap of faith, developers converted the piers into residences on the water. And so ratherthan house cargo, Piers 3 and 5 were transformed to house people. (Click here for photos of Pier 3 underrenovation.) [link to the 4 "pier3construction.jpg" files; place all pics on one page.]

One of the most striking aspects of the conversion was the removal of the roofs of both buildings toproduce a charming open-air atrium in each one. All sorts of living spaceslarge, small and multi-levelwere created with the addition of interior walls made of modern materials. Structural steel was not onlyretained (out of necessity), but was also highlighted in the atriums and elsewhere. Plus, the all-importantamenity of a parking lot was incorporated on the lower level of each building. The condominiums did notsell well at first, so the Piers at Penn's Landing became apartment complexes in the later 1980s. By1994, however, the Piers became condominiums again and quickly sold out.

Today, the Piers at Penn's Landing are successful established condominiums. The residences here arewoven into the beautiful and powerful structure of two historic buildings with an interesting past. Theindustrial facades of Piers 3 and 5 grace the Riverwalk, a landscaped promenade along the waterfront

and Columbus Boulevard that celebrates Philadelphia's maritime history. The unique location of the Piersat Penn's Landing is not only picturesque, but also practical. The Delaware River functions like a castle'smoat, enhancing the privacy of the community within and buffering the community from the noise of thecity. The sounds heard are those of the river, and the views seen are the dazzling sights of water, sky,boats and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Fireworks are visible from many living rooms on some holidays.At one time, railroad tracks ran through some of those living rooms...

--By Harry Kyriakodis, Pier 3 resident