Inside Fishtown’s Abandoned Ajax Metal Company Complex with LightFoot

(Photos by LightFoot)

Beautiful little tour of Fishtown’s Ajax Metal Company complex by photographer LightFoot!

Some background by LightFoot…

“Fishtown’s industrial heritage includes several metalworking and metal-fabrication establishments that date to the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One vestige of the recent past is the Ajax Metal Company complex [across the street from the Barbary.] Consisting of four buildings constructed between 1893 and 1944, this complex, once devoted to the smelting and refining of metals, embraces the entire block bounded by Frankford Avenue to the east, Richmond Street to the north, Allen Street to the south, and Interstate 95 to the west. In 1950 Ajax sold the site to its present owner and it was left to rot shortly there after despite some of the bays still being used for storage. (http://www.workshopoftheworld.com/fishtown/ajax.html, 2007).

This entire factory and warehouse space will soon be gone – replaced by some “modern” condos and retail space as part of Philly’s brighter image. Despite the heavy graffiti and years of neglect, there is still enough grandeur left in the remaining wood of the upstairs office space to give a hint of what the past looked like in this once magnificent structure.”