Whitaker Mill Cedar Grove

The stretch of Tabor Road you are on was once a company town built around one of Philadelphia's most durable textile mills. In eighteen thirteen, Henry Whitaker erected a waterwheel-powered textile mill here and named the community Cedar Grove. The mill passed to William Whitaker and Sons, which kept its looms running for one hundred fifty-seven consecutive years inside the original buildings.

During the Civil War the mill supplied canvas and wool blankets to Union forces. It also holds two quiet firsts: it was the first mill in the United States to manufacture bed ticking, and chenille manufacturing processes were patented here. Production finally stopped in nineteen seventy. Five years later the mill was destroyed by arson and demolished, though a handful of original structures still stand in the surrounding neighborhood as reminders of what was here.