American Ruins

This country's unmatched and unlimited industrial might helped define the 20th century. But that was then, and this is now.

- By Jesse McKinley

Port Richmond Generating Station

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A hulking neoclassical behemoth on the banks of the Delaware River, the Port Richmond Generating Station bears both the scars of its age and the faint etching of its past owner and purpose: the Philadelphia Electric Company.

The building's birth dates to the Jazz Age, when Philadelphia was booming and needed energy to bring light to its eventually Springsteen-serenaded streets.

The method of making electricity was simple and sultry: Coal-fired boilers would superheat water, the resulting steam would spin turbines and converters would channel the spark out into Philly's territory.

Despite its industrial ethos, the company wanted the station to look good, too, so it hired John T. Windrim, the famed Philly architect who had designed a series of anciently inspired buildings around town. For the Port Richmond station, Windrim's vision included an arching, skylighted turbine hall that was "modeled after the ancient Roman baths," according to Jack Steelman's Workshop of the World, a study of the city's industrial history.

That building opened in 1925, though only part of Windrim's plan came to fruition: The Depression, after all, dramatically reduced the need for power, and the prospects for generating a profit off it. Still, improvements and addendums kept it purring till the mid-'80s, when it finally closed after six decades in service.

Since then, neglect and the Northeastern winters have pockmarked the glass ceiling of the wide-open main hall, leaving it with dozens of broken windows, casting slivers of sunshine on the floor below, which sometimes floods, as rain and snow pelt the stone carapace and puddles therein. A tree sprouts from the rooftop and rust cakes smokestacks.