Golaski Labs
One of the main work areas of the former Golaski Laboratories in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, PA.
Updated April 20, 2022 | By Matthew Christopher
When a contact of mine called to let me know they had access to a lab building in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, I had no idea what to expect. Upon arrival, the first thing I noticed was a poorly maintained Victorian-era home that had presumably once been white emblazoned with signs that read “BEARING PRODUCTS CO.”, “OVERBROOK KNITTING CORP.”, AND “GOLASKI LABORATORIES, INC.” I entered a squat, nondescript factory next door, and while it was cluttered with all sorts of machinery it seemed to be in relatively good repair.
As I wandered back further, though, it was clear that areas of the factory had been out of use for quite some time. The electricity still worked but tarps draped from the ceiling and buckets to collect water were everywhere and indicated that the roof was in bad shape. As a result of the leaking water, portions of the wooden floor were starting to wear through and several areas had already collapsed, threatening to pull large metal shelves down with them into the basement. In one shop area of the building, an ancient CRT monitor sat on a bench next to shelving lined with hundreds of boxes of sewing needles.
A workshop in Golaski Labs collects dust.
Though I had no background information on the site at the time, I later learned Golaski Labs was founded by an enigmatic inventor named Walter Golaski who was born in 1913. Golaski started out working as a needle mechanic for the Torrington Company in Connecticut. Torrington manufactured a number of machined parts including sewing needles, and before long Golaski was promoted to managing Torrington’s factory in Philadelphia. Taking night classes in Mechanical Engineering at Drexel University, Golaski soon innovated a method to convert silk machines to produce nylon. He founded Bearing Products Company in 1945 which absorbed the Overbrook Knitting Corporation eleven years later. A gifted tinkerer, Golaski acquired patents for a number of unique technologies and modifications to machinery that he concocted. His most important was the close-knit vascular graft made of Dacron, a proprietary polyester fiber with hypoallergenic and mildew-resistant qualities and used in premium household textiles.
According to the Cardiac Specialty Institute, a “vascular graft (also called vascular bypass) is a surgical procedure that redirects blood flow from one area of the body to another by reconnecting the blood vessels. Vascular grafting is most commonly done to bypass a complete or partial blockage in an artery in order to improve blood flow to the organ supplied by the diseased artery.” At present cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, and in the United States over 400,000 coronary artery bypass grafting procedures are performed every year. Though vascular grafts existed before Golaski’s Dense Knit Dacron Vascular Prosthesis, they weren’t particularly effective at adapting to the needs of a host body as they were, according to Jacob Down’s excellent essay in Hidden City, “brittle, stiff, and not sufficiently porous to allow for ideal blood flow or for tissue ingrowth–the process whereby the host actively grows tissue around, and develops a symbiotic relationship with the foreign material.” By comparison, Golaski’s revision of vascular grafts greatly increasing how finely they could be knitted, making them more porous, efficient, and pliable.
Golaski’s problem was that if he acquired a patent for his graft it would take ten years to test and the patent would expire in twenty years, at which point larger companies would likely begin manufacturing the vascular grafts and muscle him out of his own business. Understandably, Golaski didn’t want to lose exclusivity of production. Consequently, every graft was manufactured, packaged, and shipped in his factory. In fact, when I asked if I could photograph inside the house on the property I had first seen when I arrived, Walter’s son Johnpaul declined because there were still trade secrets inside.
Hundreds of boxes of needles labeled "SHORT BUTT" and "LONG BUTT" lined the shelves at Golaski Labs. Insert your own joke here.
Being unable to photograph the interior of the mansion still stings a little, even though I fully respect Johnpaul’s decision and am grateful for the opportunity I did get. I haven’t seen any documentation of the mansion’s interior though, and I’m far less concerned with trying to figure out the intricacies of Golaski’s methods than I am just curious about what the personal effects were that he left behind. While the factory is compelling - particularly, I imagine, if one knows a lot about the machinery inside, which I do not – there was almost nothing that directly spoke to who Golaski was. Old photographs, books, and other fragments in a home humanize people and help me connect to them, and I’d love to give some sort of impression of Golaski beyond his rightful place as a very significant footnote in medical history.
There was only one such personal object in the factory, but it was significant: in a lonely and nondescript corner of the building I found Golaski’s 1927 Packard. After its inspection expired in 1956, he had kept it at his mother’s house until her death, when it was moved to his factory. Packards were status symbols, and Golaski would have been only 14 when it was built – at what point did he buy it? Clearly it was significant to him, as he used it nineteen years after when it was new and kept it for decades, even after it was no longer drivable. While his Packard certainly would require extensive repairs, I was amazed by how well it had aged. Walter’s Packard was removed from the building in 2019 and is in storage, although I have still not heard back from Johnpaul whether the restoration took place.
Golaski's 1927 Packard was left forgotten in a corner of the factory building.
Shortly after the Packard was removed, Golaski Labs was razed by Mosaic Development. In its place a $7 million, 45,000 square foot mixed use development was to be built named Golaski Labs, consisting of 40 apartments, offices, a co-op working space, and a restaurant. Construction on the complex was stalled by Covid but according to The Flats At Golaski website apartments are currently for rent.
As for Golaski’s vascular graft designs, he kept them a secret until his death at age 83 in 1996. Dacron grafts are still in use, although Teflon is now the most common type of graft. Nevertheless, Golaski’s improvements to vascular grafts helped prolong hundreds of thousands of lives. Though the property he created them in is gone, it is certainly an impressive legacy to leave behind.
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