Here’s an advertisement for Ivins, Dietz & Magee from the program/souvenir booklet for the play L’Aiglon starring Maude Adams which played in Philadelphia at The Broad Street Theater back in 1901.
Ivins, Dietz & Magee were carpet manufacturers with a retail store on 12th and Market. Their carpet mill was located in Kensington at North 7th Street, Lehigh Avenue, and Marshall Street.
Traditionally, Kensington was known as the original hub of working class Philadelphia, with both native and immigrant workers living close to their work sites or working at home. Early nineteenth century industry in the area was diverse; it included glass factories and potteries, wagon and machine works, and a chemical factory. Many of the earlier sites were located in West Kensington (west of Front Street), spreading north from the Spring Garden District and Northern Liberties. However, the textile trades came to dominate Kensington by the mid-nineteenth century. The genesis of the ingrain carpet industry was centered around Oxford and Howard Streets in West Kensington, where some mills still stand. Other early carpet mills in this area are now gone, but they included James Gay’s Park Carpet Mill, the Dornan Brothers’ Monitor Carpet Mill, William J. Hogg’s Oxford Carpet Mill, the Stinson Brothers’ Columbia Carpet Mill, and the carpet mills of Horner Brothers, and Ivins, Dietz, and Magee (later of Hardwick and Magee).
In Figured Tapestry: Production, Markets and Power in Philadelphia Textiles 1885 – 1941, Philip Scranton wrote:
Ivins, Dietz, and Magee, which had 125 hand looms in 1884 and 87 at the time of the strike, reported but 50 remaining in 1887, having increased its complement of power looms from 46 to 100 in three years. By 1890, only a few ingrain hand looms were still actively used, reportedly by manuafacturers who kept them going to provide work for aged weavers.
