“Workshop of the World” was the proud claim of Philadelphia’s industries and manufacturers for close to a century after the Civil War. During these years, the city’s many neighborhoods supported hundreds of mills and factories which gave it a diversity of production that was unmatched anywhere in the world.

The Workshop of the World (WOW) books are richly detailed and illustrated chapter publications prepared as conference guidebook for the 1990 and 2007 Annual Meetings of the national Society for Industrial Archeology (SIA) in Philadelphia.
The titles: “Workshop of the World” (1990), and “Workshop of the World Revisited” (2007) present historical surveys of over 150 industrial sites in Philadelphia, PA.

John Bowie headed the conference Book Committee and WOW would not have been completed without his encouragement, organizing, and editing skills.

These surveys and others produced in ongoing research have now been digitally presented in a format designed for the website:

www.workshopoftheworld.com