PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future

The looming white oil storage tanks along Allegheny Avenue are there for a reason. Oil has simply supplanted coal on a site that, 150 years ago, was famous for making Philadelphia the largest exporter of coal in the nation. The Richmond Coal Wharves, a mile-long stretch of the Port Richmond waterfront, were once the major embarkation point for tons of coal hauled out of mines and pits in the Pennsylvania hinterland. An engraving from 1853 shows workers pushing wheelbarrows of coal onto waiting wooden vessels. Another image from the same period shows the Richmond Coal Wharves pictured alongside Christ Church, the Customs House, and other top Philadelphia landmarks.

Later, great steam freighters like the SS Crown Point routinely departed Richmond bound for London with a belly full of grain.

By the 20th century, the site was run by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, whose tracks came through the city along the line of Lehigh Avenue, then burst into a wide fan of more than 200 branches and sidings to service 24 piers. Grain was stored in a towering elevator system, and iron ore was loaded onto freighters by giant steel lattice contraptions. Oil and natural gas occupied a growing tank farm.

In the years since, the business of Richmond’s great cargo terminal has been taken over by more modern facilities, like the nearby Tioga Marine Terminal.

Reminders of the glory days are being rediscovered. Up by Pulaski Park, three steel gantries loom over three ruined piers, and are regarded as scenic by many park visitors. Long ago, the gantries would have had barges tucked beneath them. But like much of the Richmond Coal Wharves site, they serve no particular purpose today.