Items

Historic resources from our archives - images, maps, documents, and more.

Play Ball! Meet the 1960 PWD Softball Team

Birch’s Views of Philadelphia, 1800

Coal Depot, Richmond, on the Delaware (Picturesque America)

Dauphin and Sydenham car crash, Jan. 17, 1978

Cartoon depicting William Penn toasting the Devil with a glass of filtered water

“Speeding the Parting Guest,” Feb. 25, 1909

Chart of deaths from typhoid fever in Philadelphia from 1860 to 1936

Typhoid fever deaths, 1860-1936

William Penn balks at drinking the "mixed drink" offered him: Schuylkill water, mixed with pollution from the upstream sources named. Editorial cartoon by Fred Morgan, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 6, 1899. One of a series of cartoons drawn by Morgan protesting the state of the city's drinking water and trying to encourage the passage of legislation authorizing the construction of a water filtration system.

“A Decidedly Mixed Drink,” April 6, 1899

Fairmount Gardens, with the Schuylkill Bridge. This 1839 engraving, published in London, shows a view of the South Garden from the walkways that brought visitors up the cliffside to the overlooks at the height of the reservoirs. The fountain used the pressure of the reservoirs and was a a delightful refreshment in hot weather, and a wonder at all times. One anachronistic element of this engraving is the Upper Ferry Bridge, which burned the year before the print was published. Harding’s Hotel, a popular resort, is at the western end of the bridge.

Fairmount Gardens with the Schuylkill Bridge, 1839

“Fairmount Waterworks. From the forebay.” (From nature & on stone G. Lehman; Published by C.G. Childs & G. Lehman, 1833. Free Library of Philadelphia, Print & Picture Collection)

Fairmount Water Works from the forebay, 1833

This 1838 view of the Fairmount Water Works with the Schuylkill River in the distance, by John T. Bowen, “captures the pleasures of Fairmount in its heyday,” writes historian Jane Mork Gibson. “The neat beauty of the works set into a gentle landscape, steep paths and steps that offered an exhilirating contrast to the general flatness of Philadelphia, as well as the excitement of boat races on the river and refreshments offered in the former Engine House, all prompted the admiring comments of visitors.”

Fairmount Water Works and the Schuylkill River, 1838

Portrait of Frederick Graff with Centre Square Water Works in the background, by James Peale, 1804. (Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent)

Frederick Graff portrait with Centre Square Water Works in background

Allegory of the Schuylkill statue