This brought back memories. I recently retired from an old factory built in the early 40's to support WWII. At one time (so I was told) it was the largest building under one roof (100+ acres) and had a lot of the same things like wooden block floors, hand laid brick walls, old signs and passages hidden away over the years.

Early 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN HISTORY IS SO FASCINATING TO ME, And ofcourse the old cars were so neat as well, THIS is so cool!👍

Awesome Guy's, Awesome... Growing up in Pittsburgh my father's body shop was in an old building that had to do with train repair, I'm not exactly sure what they did there but I used to love going through all the old buildings and looking at all the old parts, pieces and machinery left behind. It's such a cool feeling to be in a place where everything around you is 75 years or older

Nice of you guys to document something like this and share it with all of us. If that building could talk can you imagine the stories it could tell.

Every piece of wood,door, frame ,window, floor, cabinet, every thing is old growth lumber that every woodsmith wood luv to get his hands on !!! including me !!

Cool floor background story for those who appreciate the ingenuity of people before us.

Preserve the patina! Thanks for sharing this adventure.

That type of end-grain flooring was still being installed as late as the 1940s. I used to work at USAF Plant 6 (aka the "Bell Bomber Plant," now Lockheed-Martin) in Marietta, GA, and a number of areas still had that flooring from the original construction in 1942.

I could have spent a day wandering a place like that. I liked how he explained in the other video they had an original building believed to have been built in the 1850’s and they essentially they just kept expanding around it and incorporating other buildings as they went. It really makes sense though in an era before people worked in the city and drove home to the suburbs, you’d just keep expanding in your area as most people weren’t driving anywhere at the time.

The knitting of arteries story was real interesting...Cheers for the tour.

I'm glad you showed more of that building and without any annoying music. Cool adventure. Thanks

I would have loved to have gotten my hands on about 500 square feet of that flooring they used in the factory. That stuff is priceless and today, nearly unattainable. My brother, back in the early seventies unused to take down old buildings such as this one for the useable materials. His entire house was built of used materials and looked great AND is still standing.

The building looks like the neighbourhood , a bit unloved , I certainly wouldn't want to be alone down there in the dark . Great video and really interesting to see these old buildings in America, how id love to have a rummage around .

The wood brick flooring is most likely made from pecan wood. It was formerly used extensively in areas of factories that used heavy equipment (Ex: Tool & Die shops) because it was a dense wood that was highly resistant to heavy weight impacts, and didn't absorb liquids which prevented rot and decay. As pecan wood became more scarce and expensive it fell out of common use.

I live in western NC.Our area was also devastated when the textile left... We also lost our furniture industry as well in the early 2000's, this area looks very similar to where you were in Penn. It's almost like stepping back in time when you walk in to those old buildings isn't it... Most were obviously built without a permit from the state ;-)

What you called mould, may be paper. I encountered this once before when replacing some flooring in a supermarket. The tongue and groove boards had been wet for a long time, under refrigerated cabinets (like large chest type freezers) that they had expanded against each other. The expansion created so much pressure the edges of the boards had turned into wet paper which occupied a reasonable volume but shrunk considerably when I collected some in a specimen bottle. That it was paper was confirmed by the University in my employer's home town. A very interesting experience indeed.

I enjoy your videos & have a comment about health concerns and mold. I had a friend who was a wood worker. He sanded a lot of wood & contracted a fungus in his lungs from sanding a piece which had fungus on or in it. He died from this after about 2 years of various treatments. Please be aware & use a protective mask if you are going to be around fungus. It only takes once to ruin your health. ~ from Texas, Richard.

I have pictures of a 1915 Twin Six. Those Packards are solid and very quiet running!

Love it. I would probably have spent the whole day rummaging through the old equipment, trying to figure out what it was used for.

OH MAN!!!!!!!!! I absolutely love places like this, especially when the owners are eager to sell or get rid of the stuff in the buildings. Too bad it is so far away from where I live.

Matt glad to see you got the sign!!!!!! Your right there was a lot of neat stuff in there.... The floor with the wood was really wild thanks for sharing that with us junkman do

Well thank you for feeding my curiosity lol I commented on the last video it would be fun to just look around, we are always looking for that stash of old ford parts

I would like to see the building restored also. This video was published 3 days before the Packard plant’s bridge collapsed. Would love to see so much of our history saved.

Oooo a typewriter!

A wonderful ready made movie set !.....a real treat to see it and the old car as it was....

So so cool Matt. Thx for sharing.🇧🇲

would love to have those old yarn cones !!!!!!! used to play with them as a kid ,my Mom worked knitting machines in 50s and 60 's

wow wooden cobbles some of the streets in the city of wellington New Zealand were done exactly this way in the late 1800s or early 1900s they occasionally dig them up when doing redevelopment works more great vids from iron trap keep them coming

I love to prowl around like this.

Awesome! Cool adventure for sure!

It was all up and running and served some kind of purpose at one time. It was probably in a nice neighborhood with good jobs for a lot of people. If only the place could talk.

From the size of the houses in the area, that neighborhood used to be like a "Striver's Row" type of deal - not quite like some millionaires mecca or something, but still plenty highbrow enough to show you were a mover & shaker back in the day. From the looks of it, the house there was probably built sometime in the 1860's-1870's. Unfortunately, as has been the case of a lot of these early Victorian-era places in formerly high-tone neighborhoods, as the neighborhood went down hill in the early 20th century (1910-1920), these huge, luxurious places were sub-divided into apartments or let out as rooming houses and fleabag flophouses, then later on in the 1930's & 1940's, the places would be re-purposed as businesses of all sorts, with a lot of 'em having storefronts added on that reached right to the sidewalk as if it were a regular city street business. So, you'd have all these ugly, bland looking boxes stuck on the front of these beautiful houses in a formerly quaint, peaceful and quiet neighborhood. So, I guess it doesn't surprise me a bit that a 1927 Packard was found & housed in the back of the place for decades. ;) Hell of a good story, though.....

honestly, i think this is the best video i have ever seen on the internet!

This shows the decay of America's lost industrial might.

Nice video , I'm glad you are making an effort in recording the background history , it makes the subject more interesting now and keeps the past alive in the future .

Well great minds think alike, and here is the rest of the story on the building...This was cool to see and imagine this place making some noise from al those machines running,

If the building gets revovated, it would be cool to see it again and compare the before-after.

Very cool, thanks...

👍👍 yeah. Would've loved to see more of the inside of the house, Building 👍❗Was the house connect to the shop❓or was all one shop. ❓❓ looks like an old awesome building ..😳🤔😀👍

Very cool thanks for sharing, what's happening with the building.

Great addition of a video. So cool to see inside the old building and how far gone it is.

A very cool adventure that's for sure. Apparently there are still two wood block paved streets in Chicago!

So Crazy, so this guy said his dad was born in 1913 and died in 1997, he was born in 1974, so his dad was obvs 61 when he was born. The whole family dynamics sound interesting. His father had to be highly intelligent in the engineering field to be able to not only remember what those machines could do and were capable of from his memory working in factories as a child, but smart enough to realize he could convert them to make artificial heart valves and arteries. He probably left a pretty penny to those kids when he passed away. True "Trust fund babies" They probably had no reason to ever get rid of those buildings until it was forced on them, some accounting firm that handled all the Estate stuff paid the yearly taxes and so they sat.

Hey Matt, very cool old shop. The cobble wood flooring was a really neat bit. My Granddad was a tradesman in maintenance at Cummings Engine Company in Columbus Indiana and the whole factory floor in plant 1, was that style of fitted wood cobbles, and when it would rain too much, that floor would swell and buckle upward. Grandad talked about what tricks they would use to maintain it. Seeing that floor in this vid really brought those memories back. Thanks Man. Oh, and dip the Packard in Marvel Mystery Oil! Wipe it off and getter unstuck and fire it up! Patina is proof of time served!

I hope someone saves that wood brick flooring....I would love to have it.☺

Amazing that building has lasted that long in a ghetto in Philly winters. Those tie machines are probably sought after.

As they walked down the stairs I noticed some what appeared to be copper water pipe to the right. I know I would have been routing the boxes and checking the paperwork.

Very cool

Very cool!!!

The machetes are just from people exploring, maybe even left by workers.

You can only hope that when they do any demolition that they try to save as much of the old beams and such as they can.

Please pass on to the building owner.....if he could go to the local fire station and ask them if they want to do a walk thru of the building to become familiar with the layout and building conditions. A building with those structural defects could injure or kill a firefighter if they are in there in the middle of the night. I'm a fire captain in Trenton, and we love having the knowledge of buildings in our district. Love your videos....Thanks!

Love the vids!

the wood block floors were to absorb the machine cutting oil so it wasn't as slippery and a safety hazard

Your tour of the building was very Blair Witch like. Only in Philly. Thanks

So sad what's happening to our once-great country/cities. Hope the car lives on to drive again.

It’s amazing that they still own it all, and kinda just left everything as it was, and that it wasn’t looted already. Plus, how many places like that still exist? It’s kinda neat how they built factories behind houses, and they would have been nice houses at the time, really cool

Neat old building! I found a huge factory building in NJ in the middle of the woods. It was in way worse shape. Filled to the gills with junk and massive amounts of scrap iron. In the middle was a 63 coupe corvette i managed to save. The worst part was the 3 to 4in of dry bird shit covering it. Was NASTY to deal with. Like asbestos in the air.

Awesome video! I haven't seen any buildings like that since I left Baltimore! While I was in high school I worked for a construction company that renovated a lot of the 1800s buildings in the city. To look back now and think about how they just demolished everything in their way and just destroyed all that history is sad! Although I didn't think much of it at 17-18 years old, it's cool that I got to see a lot of it before it was destroyed.

( We are big building fans. Thanks for those pictures too. On a side note Grandmother is a 1927...heading over there to visit today)

Can you do an updated video on the 1927 Packard?

What decision has been made for this car ?

Wow!

3:30 When i worked at the Ford Assembly Plant in Oakville the 1980's ... sections of the factory floor was made of that exact same stuff ... probably still is?

The wood paving in the shop is a form of Nicolson pavement,

We now know what Santa is up to on his down time

Just found this video, any update on the car, from the family at all???

Just curious, are you working on this car for this gentleman or is it going off to auction?? Does he still have it and looking for someone to get it running?

Any update on this car after 5 years?

1927 was probably the last year for those big, ugly drum headlights before they went to acorn shaped lights on Packards.

Great to see these buildings. I want to encourage some smoother camera work, it gets a little dizzying to have the camera bobbing all around like it was attached to a headband or something.

Gonna sub to see updates!

great vid. So what are they going to do with the buildings? its been chic the last few years to convert old factories to housing. is this what they are planning?

That floor is made the same way they made ships tar in the middle

Where is the building in Philly?

Grest video. What camera did you use ?

I wonder what that round thing is behing the owner at 3:04 min its a round disk on a pedestal

Talk about "factory clearance"! I wonder how much somebody paid for that asbestos-and-lead-ridden site? If it was metal fabrication for years, there are likely other heavy metals and solvents in the ground as well. Philly Codes Dept. isn't kind to the rehabbers of such places -- esp. if the planned use is Residential. Hope the buyers have thought of the costs of testing and remediation of all these hazards.

Obviously that property has been trespassed upon. Very lucky no one ever got it in their head's to break down that flimsy door. That car would have been _totally_ destroyed.

Watch out for all that suspect asbestos pipe insulation handing down at 13:34.

Theres more to this story. It was in 1969 when I was age 13 that me and this girl had a little fun in the back seat of that 27 packard and I and her for fun lifted that seat cover on that back seat and sat my under wear and her panties side by side the stretched the seat cover back over. That car was in the same place ten and where they found it

I love the building but i bet the roof and so on is needing love. I would also be looking at some of the machinery and tooling. to buy.

At about 15:00 y'all totally missed an opprotunity to recreate the ending of Blair Witch!

If that place is that far? Gone. Rotten floor like that you're taken Chances that The whole building good land on top of you like fall in. Means nothing is holding the center up

9:29 awesome share

Looks like one of the nicer hoods here in Detroit,except that building would have been picked over by scrappers. That car would be long gone.

I notice a lot of "newish" beams and columns. It looks like the basement was refurbed sort of recently. Maybe 20 years ago.

Matt This an off subject question. I saw when you went to Hershey and bought a injection system that was nailed to a board. Could you do a video on that ? I know it's a constant flow, much like Hilborn or Enderle, but it's different than Strombergs or Webers. By the way very interesting video. Love exploring old buildings or homes and try thinking about the people and history of the place.

Wow! Thats like creepy silent of the lamb shit!😳 but great history behind it.

When was this place abandoned?

what was the fate of the car? its 4 years later now....

Are you removing the cars?

That is a ghetto plus neighborhood!!

That old blue truck in your garage is so cool. Can you give me some background on it?

What is the music...like it

When you are going to rebuild that car

Google Golaski laboratories and Walter Golaski on Wikipedia and read an interesting story and history on this man and his accomplishments.

Any old steam engines?

whatever happened to the car? (one year later)

Too bad they didn't save the roof years ago. If they did that building would have been in great shape today.