The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard

The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard was established in 1801 at the foot of Federal Street in the Southwark section of the city. After Civil War naval combat demonstrated the superiority of ironclad vessels, the Federal Street yard became obsolete, and in 1868 the federal government acquired League Island for a new shipyard to build iron warships. Because League Island was low, marshy land much of it covered by water at high tide, early work focused on dredging the channel from the mainland, filling marshland, and building embankments. The first permanent structure there, the Yard and Docks building, was completed in 1875. Development was slow at first, but in 1880 Congress funded a dry dock, and extensive improvements followed through the rest of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, including a second dry dock, officers' quarters, and large shop buildings. The yard laid the keel of its first ship, the 10,000-ton Henderson, in 1915, and during World War I it built the Navy's first hospital ship, Relief, and first destroyer tender, Dobbin, followed soon after by four minesweepers. After the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, ship construction temporarily stopped and the yard became a major center for ship scrapping, but shipbuilding resumed in the 1930s with vessels including the cruiser Minneapolis and the battleship Washington. During World War II, Philadelphia became one of the Navy's major shipbuilding yards, employing 47,596 full-time workers at its peak, constructing 53 vessels, and repairing, converting, or overhauling 1,218 others. Postwar cutbacks sharply reduced employment, and the yard then specialized in overhauling and modernizing naval vessels while serving as home port for the Reserve Inactive Fleet. Shipbuilding resumed on a small scale in the 1960s, and the last vessel built there was Blue Ridge, launched on January 4, 1969. In the late 1970s the yard began refurbishing aircraft carriers under the Service Life Extension Program, overhauling Saratoga, Forrestal, Independence, Kitty Hawk, Constellation, and finally John F. Kennedy, which departed in September 1996. Amid post-Cold War defense reductions, Congress confirmed the yard's closure in April 1991, and it officially closed on September 27, 1996.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States