Items

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

Map Showing Districts, Boroughs & Townships Incorporated in Consolidation of Philadelphia in 1854

Philadelphia Navy Yard, July 1872

Queen Lane Reservoir pumping station

Queen Lane Pumping Station, proposed design

Hopkins Darby 1877 map

Darby, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 1877

Colored print showin all the booths, restaurants and other amenities of the fair

Ground Plan, Great Central Sanitary Fair, Philadelphia

Receipt from privy cleaning by the Frankford Odorless Excavating Company, 1885

Privy Cleaning Receipt, 1885

Mill Creek Sewer under construction. Several men standing beside a giant partially constructed sewer pipe.

Mill Creek Sewer under construction, 1883

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

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, portrait by Filippo Costaggini, 1880

Portrait of Benjamin Henry Latrobe

Black-and-white reproduction of the title page of an old periodical

Images from “A Day in the Ma’sh” by Maurice F. Egan, Scribner’s Monthly, July 1881

Pumping stations after Philadelphia's incorporation, 1854

Main Pumping Stations for Philadelphia Drinking Water

Black-and-white image showing a factory, smokestacks and smoke, and streets

Dobson’s Mill, 1884, from History of Philadelphia by Scharf & Wescott