Sign 9 - Empty Case and Packing Box Storage

In 1918, Bethlehem Loading Company prepared a site plan showing the layout and arrangement of buildings for the three munitions factories. A separate site plan was drawn for Belcoville. Because the war ended about seven months after construction began, not every building in the Mays Landing Plant was erected. An architectural historian and an archaeologist spent three days in the early spring of 2003 walking the plant site to determine which structures had been built and which had not. All ruins were photographed and measured, and then compared with those on the original site plan. The information they collected was then used to prepare a nomination to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

The plant’s site plan shows eight empty case and packing box storage buildings on the east side of the 75-millimeter plant, but in reality only four were built. As their name implies, the structures were used to store the empty packing boxes and cases into which the loaded shells were later placed and then shipped. Although filled with explosives, the shells were relatively stable because the detonating fuses were shipped separately and were not inserted until just before use.

No historic photographs or written descriptions have been found to date for these buildings, but they appear in an aerial drawing as two-stories tall with a rectangular footprint, no windows, and a gable roof topped with a clerestory. All that remains of these four buildings are 12-inch high foundation walls, 10-inches thick, enclosing a building that was 100-feet long by 50-feet deep.

Other buildings not erected by war’s end include two TNT magazines, the fire department headquarters building, one cafeteria, one production line in the 155-millimeter plant complex, and a smokeless powder magazine. Also not constructed were several buildings to store incoming shells, paint, primers, and ammonium nitrate, which was a component of the explosive used in the shells.