General Stores and Mold Loft Building--Harriman Yard of the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation National Register of Historic Places Listing

German U-boats were sinking Allied merchant ships faster than yards could replace them in 1917. Washington panicked. They funded the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation to build a massive, state-of-the-art shipyard along the Delaware River in Bristol, Pennsylvania. They called it the Harriman Yard. The General Stores and Mold Loft Building stood at the center of this frantic wartime mobilization. It is massive. The second floor housed a vast, unobstructed wooden floor where draftsmen drew ship designs at full, 1:1 scale. They called this the mold loft. Workers then used these massive wooden patterns, or molds, to bend and cut the steel plates that formed the hulls of forty cargo ships. Downstairs, the general stores section kept track of thousands of rivets, valves, and tools. This was industrialization on a scale the world had never seen before.

Most of the Harriman Yard vanished after the war ended and the company shut down in 1925. The surrounding company town became a regular Bristol neighborhood. But this brick giant survived. It is actually a rare relic of the Emergency Fleet Corporation's massive industrial experiment. Look closely at the facade. You can still see the original heavy timber framing and industrial steel sash windows. Today, the structure stands as a prime candidate for redevelopment. Preserving a place like this takes serious effort, though.

Modern architects face quite a challenge converting a 1917 shipyard warehouse into something usable. The scale is intimidating. Those massive open bays do not easily lend themselves to standard drywall partitions, but that raw, historic character is exactly what makes the property valuable today. Federal tax incentives help. They offset the steep costs of restoring century-old masonry and timber. A textbook case of saving history through smart design.

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