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6 unusual facts about Tacony


Frank Shuman

His large home and laboratories still stand in the Tacony section of Philadelphia, as an apartment house and garages.

Tacony, Philadelphia

The most significant event in the development of Tacony was the acquisition of land there in 1846 for a ferry-wharf by the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad, which had first laid tracks through the town in 1834, along the route from its depot at Frankford Avenue and Palmer Street, Kensington, to Trenton, New Jersey.

The land was a gift of the Disston Family, and the building was a gift of Andrew Carnegie.

In 1894, Frank Shuman, inventor of wire glass and a pioneer in solar power twice featured on the cover of Scientific American, built a large inventor's compound on Disston Street and there built the first solar-powered steam engine.

Chick Hartley (1880-1948), star baseballer for the Tacony AA semi-pro club, he played for the New York Giants in 1902.

William Biles

They went hence in a shallop to Upland, stopping at Takany (Tacony), a village of Swedes and Finns, where they drank good beer.


Connecting Railway

In particular, the Kensington & Tacony Branch served the upper Philadelphia waterfront and the Frankford Arsenal, and the Oxford Road Branch served a Sears distribution center near its crossing of the Reading.

Delaware River Greenway Partnership

With funding from National Park Service and the William Penn Foundation, DRGP and a bi-state advisory committee of government and non-profit representatives, have outlined the initial route linking 24 communities from Trenton to Palmyra, New Jersey on the New Jersey side, and from Morrisville to the Tacony neighborhood of Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania side.

Disston A.A.

The Disston Saw Works, founded by Henry Disston in 1840, was a company which had facilities in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood and later moved to the neighborhood of Tacony.

Tacony Corporation

In 2003, Tacony Corporation acquired Nancy's Notions, a sewing accessories company founded by TV Host Nancy Zieman.


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