These works, also known as the 24th Ward Water Works, were built to supply Schuylkill River water to West Philadelphia. This neighborhood was mostly undeveloped the mid-19th century, and individual buildings depended on well water (or in the case of factories, water diverted from creeks) for their supply. The works were designed by Henry P. M. Birkinbine and his partner, Newbold H. Trotter, who called themselves machinists in their listing in the 1855 City Directory. Located on the river where the Zoo now stands, the works were shut down after the Belmont Pumping Station was built further upriver in 1870.
For more on the West Philadelphia Water Works, see this chapter from Walter Graf’s comprehensive history of the city’s water works.
These three drawings are from the collection of the City Archives of Phildelphia, which is part of the city’s Department of Records. I discovered them about 15 years ago, when the archives was at 31st and Market and, as a consultant to the Philadelphia Water Department, I was allowed occasional free-range in the storage areas.
I would wander around the football-field-sized room as animated as a chicken with his head cut off, pulling open flat file drawers and rifling through them to see what treasures they might hold. These drawings were among the many treasures I found, all of which I then brought to the attention of the archivisits so they could be properly catalogued and preserved. The Philadelphia Water Department paid for this trio to be scanned at the Regional Digital Imaging Center of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, and the edited images presented here are greatly reduced in size from those originals.
The City Archives is now in a beautiful, brand-new facility at 548 Spring Garden Street; I recommend a visit if you have never been. And you might be glad to know that the new archivists no longer allow me free range in their collection, which I can only say attests to their wisdom.