Many artists leave out ugly details when they are portraying something that is mainly beautiful. That could be a mole or birthmark on the cheek of the heiress that a portrait painter has been hired to memorialize. Or it could be a telephone pole or overhead wires in the background of a landscape, utilitarian features that we all rely on, and which are so ubiquitous that they hardly register with us anymore. Unless, of course, they happen to be in the wrong place: down on the street after being snapped by ice or a falling tree, jumping around like a literal “live wire,” their crackling sparks a warning to stay away.
George B. Sommer, who created the romantic pen and ink drawing of “A Rocky Path” in the Wissahickon Creek Valley (below, right), omitted something vital from his depiction, but not because he saw it and ignored it. That path, on the west side of the valley, follows the line of an intercepting pipe that was built in the early 1900s to keep sewage from polluting the creek, which is an important tributary of the city’s water supply. Since sewers are usually out of sight, out of mind, Sommer had no way of knowing that the rock cut wasn’t natural, and that underneath a few feet of fill lay a vital part of the city’s drainage infrastructure. The photograph, taken on April 4, 1900 during the sewer’s construction, tells the part of the story that Sommer missed. Clicking the pair of pictures will open an enlarged version of the photograph.
Below are a few more photos of this sewer, officially called the Wissahickon High Level Intercepting sewer, taken on the same day.
