It made me happy seeing this storefront on 3rd Street while on the Thursday photowalk with Jim.

Philadelphia, during the 1840s-60s was the largest manufacturer in the US of umbrellas and parasols, with one manufacturer (Wright, Brothers, & Co) alone consuming over 100,000 pounds of whalebone (baleen) and over one million yards of silks, cottons and ginghams in 1857. Said manufacturer also produced 700,000 umbrellas and parasols annually and employed 450 hands in its works, in an industry that employed 1,500 persons at that time. Philadelphia’s umbrella and parasol factories consumed 200,000 pounds of rattan (for ribs, it was the cheaper, and lighter substitute for baleen); 30,000 pounds of Ivory; 6,000 pounds of walrus; 9 tons of boxwood; 30 tons of vegetable ivory. All this bone carving and turning produced eight thousand bushels of bone dust, which was sold to farmers for as fertilizer. The total product of the umbrella and parasol industry in Philadelphia at its height was nearly two million dollars.

So, that’s why it warmed the cockles of my heart to see this storefront. While the wares displayed within the store are most likely imports from overseas, it was still like a little nod to a part of the city’s manufacturing past.