Courtesy of the Hagley Museum & Library, and the Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society

Fireworks Factory
On the morning of April 3, 1930, three years after this photograph was taken, several devastating explosions at the Pennsylvania Fireworks Display Company, a collection of 16 small buildings located on the north side of Old Lancaster Road north of the PRR tracks in Devon, created unparalleled havoc to this community.

"Noise from the blast... was heard for fifty miles, in places as far away as Trenton, where windows in the State House were rattled; and Wilmington. In southern New Jersey some people thought there had been an explosion at the DuPont plants along the Delaware River. Broken glass from the concussion was reported in West Philadelphia. ... Windows were shattered in practically every building in Devon, as well as in hundreds of houses along the Main Line from Wayne to Berwyn. Countless homes were shaken: dishes broken, pictures tossed from the walls. ...People walking along the street were knocked off their feet: motorists on the Lancaster Pike were pushed off the road as if shoved by a sudden gust of wind."

When it was all over, the blast, probably caused by escaping gas used for heating stoves in one of the plant buildings, had killed 10 people and injured scores more in the worst disaster the area had ever known.