You’ll hear about fires damaging old, abandoned auto factories from time to time, ravaging a piece of our heritage, usually in deeply troubled parts of Midwest cities that have been forgotten by the rest of America. It’s not exclusively a heartland heartache. The photo you see above was snapped last week in Philadelphia.
This gutted building supply company, at 34th and Indiana in the city’s Hunting Park section, has looked exactly as you see since last June. That was when a four-alarm fire raced through the structure, generating a pall of smoke that fans at Citizens Bank Park in South Philadelphia, where the Phillies were playing at home, could clearly watch.
When it first opened during the 1920s, this structure was a major sales and service point for Autocar, the manufacturer of heavy trucks, which then had its operations based west of the city in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. The wreckage photo comes to us from Autocar enthusiast Ted Goldsborough of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Ted tells us that revived, Indiana-based Autocar has been trying to acquire the building’s façade from the demolition contractors, with no agreement thus far.