Frankford Arsenal

About this property

The Frankford Arsenal is a former United States Army ammunition plant located adjacent to the Bridesburg neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, north of the original course of Frankford Creek. Opened in 1816 on 20 acres (8.1 ha) of land purchased by President James Madison, it was the center of U.S. military small-arms ammunition design and development until its closure in 1977. Among the many other products manufactured at the arsenal were fire-control and range-finding instruments, and gauges for these components. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the arsenal's commander, Josiah Gorgas, resigned and joined the Confederate States Army in deference to the wishes of his Alabama-born wife and reported to the Confederate capital in Richmond with a large supply of U.S. Army guns and ammunition. By the end of the war, the arsenal employed over 1,000 workers. It served as a major site for the storage of weapons and artillery pieces; a depot for the repair of artillery, cavalry and infantry equipment; repair and cleaning of small arms and harnesses; the manufacture of percussion powder and Minié balls; and the testing of new forms of gunpowder and time fuses. During the Gettysburg campaign, the arsenal provided tens of thousands of muskets and vast supplies of ammunition for Pennsylvania's "Emergency Militia" regiments. Among the innovations extensively tested at the Arsenal was the Gatling Gun, an early form of machine gun that saw extensive service in the Indian Wars. During World War I and World War II, the arsenal was again busy supplying the war efforts, providing a major source of jobs and income for the region. At times, employment reached 22,000. The Frankford Arsenal was an entity unto itself, a virtual city within a city, and contained everything from its own police and fire departments, dining halls, motor pool, and a complete medical facility. The Arsenal was part of the U.S. Arsenal System—dedicated military establishments spread throughout the country to perform specific military missions for the Government. From the beginning, the Frankford Arsenal was involved in the design and manufacture of munitions. As military weapons became more complex, the center's role expanded to cover the development of a whole range of the Army's more advanced weapon systems. The Arsenal contained the world-famous Pitman-Dunn Laboratories along with a number of other R&D departments. Arsenal scientists and engineers designed and developed everything from basic materials to LASER-guided ballistics, all produced entirely in-house from the concept phase to the fielding of the equipment. New portable and embedded computer applications saw the development of the LASER rangefinder, fielded artillery computational machines (FADAC) and radar systems. During the Vietnam War, experiments in caseless ammunition, far-infrared low-light-level technologies, and advanced LASER applications were under development.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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