The Grand Battery of Philadelphia

On the Delaware River waterfront, Philadelphia once maintained one of the largest early fortifications in Pennsylvania, known as the Grand Battery or the Association Battery. It was first built in seventeen forty-eight, following the formation of a volunteer military force organized by Benjamin Franklin called the Association. Its gun count grew in the years after it was built.

A smaller companion fortification, the Society Hill Battery, stood a short distance to the north. The Grand Battery protected Philadelphia through the colonial wars of the mid-seventeen hundreds. Later this same stretch of waterfront became the site of the first Philadelphia Navy Yard, which operated through much of the nineteenth century until the Navy moved to League Island, making it one of the longest-running chapters in the city's long relationship with the river.