John B. Stetson Company, Germantown & Columbia Avenues, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA

Significance: The significance of the Stetson site lies in its association with the manufacture of the Stetson hats and with the paternalistic humanitarianism of John B. Stetson, a progressive industrialist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Stetson moved his hat manufactory to this site in 1874, nine years after he began to make hats in Philadelphia in 1865. Stetson died in 1906, but the firm he founded continued to flourish for many years thereafter, finally ceasing operations on the site in 1971. The plant at one time employed over 5,000 people and contained a total of about 1,400,000 square feet of floor space in its buildings. It was then (ca. 1920) the largest hat factory in the world.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: FN-270
Survey number: HABS PA-1227