How the Excelon Delaware power plant came to be

By Matt Blanchard
For PlanPhilly
This majestic structure, a great tan block sprouting eight rusted smokestacks, no longer generates power. But it does generate questions: Is it still in operation? Is it threatened with demolition? And if it’s just a power plant, why is it so handsomely detailed? The Delaware Power Station was built by the Philadelphia Electric Company in 1920, to avert a predicted power shortage. It labored steadily from then on, with an expansion in 1954, until its last two turbine units were silenced in February 2004. Designed by architects John T. Windrim and W.C.L. Eglin in 1917, the station is a rougher and more muscular version of the great public buildings of its time, with similar massing and classical detail. That resemblance is not coincidental; In addition to power plants, Windrim’s firm executed more refined public commissions for the Franklin Institute and Philadelphia Municipal Court.

(See further discussion of the plant’s design and construction in excerpts from Wainwright’s History of the Philadelphia Electric Company 1881-1961 at the end of this article. Courtesy Kenneth W. Milano)

The Delaware Station occupies the site of a major moment in naval history. This shore was once the Neafie & Levy Shipyard, where in November of 1861, the Union government placed an order for the construction of “one iron submarine.” Christened the Alligator, it was the first submarine of the Civil War, rushed into service with the purpose of destroying the Confederate ironclad, Merrimack. It didn’t work out that way. The entire story is available from the Office of Naval Research at www.navyandmarine.org/alligator/index.htm.

In 1922, Windrim built a sister station upriver, the equally dramatic Richmond Power Station, just south of the Betsy Ross Bridge.

The Delaware Station is now owned by Excelon Generation. With the generation turbines silent, Excelon spokesman Ben Armstrong said the company has no particular plans for the site, but is holding onto ownership of the property to see if it can return to power generation in the future.

Sara Thorp, executive director of the non-profit Delaware River City Corporation, reports that the Richmond plant was recently nominated for the historic properties register maintained by the city’s Historical Commission. The nomination failed.

History of the Philadelphia Electric Company 1881-1961. By Nicholas B. Wainwright. Philadelphia 1961.(Excerpted by Kenneth W. Milano)

In January of 1923 a third 30,000-kilowatt generator for the Delaware Station was ordered.In the Summer of 1923, a final 30,000 kilowatt was ordered for Delaware Station.

….

Two more generators were ordered for Delaware Station in 1950 and installed by 1953, two 136,000-kilowatt units, the biggest that could fit in the station. Significant of advances in the art of electric generation was the fact that while it required 146 men to operate the 195,750 kilowatts of capacity in the old part of Delaware Station, the new part with its 272,000 kilowatts called for only twenty-four more workers.