Many still remember the view of the Publicker Distillery while crossing the Walt Whitman Bridge and its billboards for Old Hickory Bourbon and other products.
Others remember how the 40-acre site on Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia became a polluted Superfund scandal after it closed in 1982.
In its heyday in the 1950s, it was one of the giants of the liquor industry with a plant in Scotland producing Inver House Scotch, named for owner Simon Neuman’s Radnor home, and was the world’s biggest buyer of Cuban molasses.
The company got into the booze business in 1933 with the end of Prohibition.
Fortune magazine ran a optimistic story at the time about how Harry Publicker — founder and Neuman’s father-in-law — was going to shake up the booze business by making drinkable whiskey without aging it. One supposes they were right. Here is the link.
Oh what a fine touch of nostalgia. It brings a tear to my eye. A smile to my face and many happy memories.
My father-in law [ jesse Gindhart] and his son Jesse worked there for years and climbed those stack when the younger men were to scared to.
I would appreciate a photo (if possible) from the bridge of the stacks with the sign “Old Hickery” and or “Schendley’s”
Thanks, Frank & Gloria Whalen
I remember that special odor we’d experience crossing the bridge, created by that plant
Oh yes. It was almost as bad as the one you got crossing the Penrose Ave. (Platt) Bridge.
My grandfather was the general contractor for years rebuilding after an explosion in the 70s. Anybody remember that?
Having grown up around Broad and Oregon (not too far from the bridge and Publicker), I remember the four or five black stacks lined up side by side close to the bridge and that magnificent Old Hickory sign which was spectacular at night. We’re talking the 60’s here when I was a child. That sign was all light bulbs, I recall, and there were amber, green and red bulbs that were timed to light up at different times to display the time, temperature, then Old Hickory. I would imagine the “computer” that controlled these lights was an electro-mechanical device using barrel switches unlike the computerized programmable logic controllers of today. I really miss that sort of stuff. I realize times change and so does the landscape. I left South Philly in the mid 80’s for good and have no desire to return; not even to visit. All the landmarks from my childhood are gone.