Then and Now: Answer Edition

Phoenixville Patch readers, again, demonstrated off-the-charts borough IQ in last week's Then and Now contest. John Q. Public was the first to correctly identify the photo as being of the Battery C Armory.

Below, courtesy of the Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area, is the full explanation:

Built in 1894 and located at the corner of Morgan and Buchanan Streets the original Battery C Armory building no longer stands. The three story brownstone building measured 80 by 40 feet. The first story held the main gunroom and a smaller room containing ‘equipment’s of harness for 50 head of horses.’ The second floor was the drill room – lit by 20 windows in the day time and by sixty electric lights at night. The drill room had over 3,000 square feet of surface without posts or obstructions of any kind. The third floor ‘is given up to bath and toilet rooms, with a wide hall running the length of the building, flanked on both sides by rows of private rooms for officers and sections.’*

In 1911 a fire proof drill shed was added to the rear of the building between the armory and Byrne’s Knitting Mill. A third Romanesque Revival style building was built at a later date and was attached to the original armory. The 1911 drill shed and the Romanesque Revival building remain standing.

In 1963 the property was transferred to the Borough of Phoenixville in exchange for other acreage within the borough. It is currently owned by the Borough of Phoenixville and used by the Department of Public Works.The old original building was taken down after 1985.

*'Illustrated History of Battery C, Third brigade, NGP’. by John Denithorne