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You would not have wanted to drink it: Philadelphia’s water supply in 1884
NOTE FROM ADAM LEVINE This excerpt, from the report of Chief Engineer William Ludlow, provides an overview of the failed attempts to keep the Schuylkill River’s Fairmount pool – from which 80 percent of the City’s water was withdrawn- free from pollution. Of special interest to me is the discussion of sewage pollution, and the…
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Catch and Release: Photographs Documenting the Catching and Recatching of the Same Fish
by Louis Cook, Philadelphia Anglers’ Club This post first appeared on PhillyH2o in 2009. Note from Adam LevineBy releasing their catches instead of eating them (especially fish that are listed in the consumption advisories as not safe to consume), serious anglers do their part to assure that there will always be fish in the rivers…
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Frankford Creek Watershed
in the context of the development of Philadelphia’s sewers and sewage treatment system by Adam Levine The history of the Frankford Creek watershed is sadly typical for urban and suburban streams: a history of gross sewage and industrial pollution; of channelization and culvertization; and of flood plain encroachment. While it may difficult for an observer…
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Overbrook, as it was
A brief history of the Overbrook neighborhood of Philadelphia, focusing on changes in the natural landscape By Adam Levine Under contract with JASTECH Development Services (Copyright 2005 and 2024) A Note on Sources An invaluable source for this research was the 1936 book, Overbrook Farms, by Tello J. d’Apery. Much information was also gleaned from examinations…
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Newspaper Clipping Scrapbooks of Frederic Graff Jr.,Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Department: Part 1, 1854-1857
PWD Historical Collection Accession 2004.071 This is the first part of a two part collection of clippings collected by Frederick Graff Jr., Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Department during the middle of the 19th century. Conserved, mounted and bound, the scrapbook contains 130 pages of clippings on a wide variety of topics, reflecting Graff’s…
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Newspaper Clipping Scrapbooks of Frederick Graff Jr., Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Department. Part 2: 1858-1871
PWD Historical Collection Accession 2004.056 This is the second part of a two part collection of clippings collected by Frederick Graff Jr., Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Department during the middle of the 19th century. Conserved and mounted on 12″ x 18″ archival board, the scrapbook contains about 35 pages numbered 125 through 160.…
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Board of Health Newspaper Clipping Scrapbooks at City Archives of Philadelphia, 1891-1908
These notes were compiled by Adam Levine in 1998. They were first posted on PhillyH2o in 2005. Most of these scrap books are very fragile, with clippings crumbling or split. Since I was not allowed to photocopy them I made the following selective list of clippings relating to sewers, water pollution, water filtration, typhoid and…
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Leverington Avenue Stormwater Sewer
This article, originally posted in 2006, is about the Leverington Avenue stormwater sewer, which drains a small section of Manayunk with an outfall at the Manayunk Canal. The flow of a small stream that once crossed Leverington at Silverwood Street is included in that drainage. This sewer was a small piece of a comprehensive “separate”…
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Sewers, Pollution, and Public Health in 19th Century Philadelphia
This article first appeared in Pennsylvania Legacies, v. 10, n.1 (May 2010), p. 14-19, published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. By Adam Levine For about 100 years, from roughly the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, Philadelphia poured raw sewage into its two major rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill, which also served as the…
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Dock Creek Sewer in 1849
A report on its condition made to City Councils Introduction by Adam LevineThis tidal creek, which flowed through the oldest part of the Philadelphia, was the first of the city’s streams to be put into an underground sewer. Leather tanners had been using and misusing the waters of Dock Creek from the city’s earliest days, both…
