Quartermaster’s Store
Preexisting Buildings
Quartermaster’s Store
Report from the Fort
16 October 1844 • Major Brevet C. W. Thomas
The Quartermaster’s Store at 55 feet in length by 20 in width, is nearly new and sufficient for all wants of the post.
National Archive
In 1842 the Quartermaster General’s Department of the U.S. Army was reorganized and given charge of all military supplies except food. This Quartermaster’s Store was built about 1843 to store and distribute to the soldiers at the fort all provisions that they would have needed for themselves and to maintain the site uniforms, shoes, bedding, shovels, pick axes, trowels, buckets and the like. Weapons and guns would have been stored in the Arsenal. Ammunition was stored in the Powder Magazines.
Structural evidence indicates the building was probably one large room that was open to the underside of the room. No doubt the interior looked like a large general store with a counter-top and walls lined with shelves and cabinets for the supplies. The building had been remodeled on the interior to meet the needs of the fort.
Preexisting Buildings
Report from the Fort
21 January 1802 • Major J. J. Ulrich Rivardi
A full description of the fort identified at least six buildings that have since been removed or replaced:
Old Officers Quarters. A small boarded building 42 feet by 12 containing two rooms with fireplaces and one without; that building is very indifferent and is occupied by Officers.
The Old Barracks, a building of wood, 50 feet by 20, has an excellent foundation of cut stones with good cellars, but the upper part is so decayed that the chimnies are all what prevents its falling in – it is now petitioned off for a deposit of provisions on one side, and a place for the Artificers (military mechanics) to work in on the other. A good building two stories high could be erected on the foundations and admit two rooms below 25 by 20 with three smaller ones above so that it would afford quarters for a whole Company – now it is not safe to let anybody quarter in it.
The Artificers Shop, (military mechanics’ shop) a wooden building 42 by 20 feet, lately fitted up for the accommodation of Izards Company and of the Artificers – two rooms below with fireplaces, a garret above without any. That building is tolerably good though old.
There are Three Small Sheds in the fort, one occupied by a soldier with his family – another used as a Laboratory – the third as an Apothecary shop. Out of the Fort is one Hospital composed of three small rooms, 12 feet by 15. It is a good wooden building but too small.
The wooden hospital was replaced about 1820 by the two-story brick building seen today. Rivardi also mentions a Shot Furnace on the water battery. An 1815 map identifies three other shot furnaces within the fort. Such furnaces were used to heat cannon balls before they were fired. Drawings from 1839 provide a record of what one looked like. The furnaces were useless after the introduction of rifled artillery and were demolished in the 1870s.
Another demolished building, the Guard House, formerly located next to the Quartermaster’s Store, is seen here in a photograph published in the Public Ledger in 1904. The building was probably built in the 1820s.
Marker can be reached from W Fort Mifflin Road, on the right when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
