Beyond the Mask - Windmill Island

“We wanted our final set piece to be both historical and fantastically imaginative at the same time, and we found this contradiction in Windmill Island,” Nick, the Production Designer, told us.

In the early summer of 1776, Windmill Island (also known as Smith’s Island) sat off the shore of colonial Philadelphia in the Delaware River. Located just south of the Drawbridge Warf, the island stretched a half-mile west from Arch Street and was approximately one block wide.  Several decades before the time of our story, two immigrant brothers had constructed an octagonal windmill on the northern end of the island, givingit its name. They also built three docks on the western side, facing away from the city, and dug a channel into the interior of the small land mass.  Because there is no evidence that the windmill was ever in operation, it is unclear what the brothers actually built it for. By the 1770s, Windmill Island was abandoned…and there it sat unused until in the 1830s it was deemed a “shipping hazard” by the US government, and dredged under.  Hmm…a shipping hazard? Or perhaps, was Windmill Island destroyed to bury once and for all the role it played in a rogue British East India Company plot against the American colonists? This island offered us the perfect mixture of historical fact and mysterious background..."

- Click Here to read the full blog update at Beyond the Mask!! (you'll find more sketches and set photos of  the windmill as well)