Items

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

men standing around a trench with pipes seen crossing through it. there is a steam engine on wheels behind them to the left, and a building in the background on the right with a sign they says Hotel Abbey, T G Schmidt & Sons, Pilsner & Puritan Beer.

Pipeline being laid in Wissahickon Avenue

Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge at Manayunk, about 1895

Gritty and the Phanatic in Ida’s Floodwaters

Dauphin and Sydenham car crash, Jan. 17, 1978

Black-and-white image of an ornately lettered document with a decorative border

Images from ‘The Water Supply of the City of Philadelphia by a proposed Aqueduct from Norristown Dam’

Wheeled robotic sewer crawler in sewer pipe

Still photo from a video sewer inspection, 2000

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

Privy Cleaning Receipt, 1885

Pen and ink drawing of the proposed Delaware Seventh Street Sewer

Plan and profile of proposed Delaware Seventh St. Sewer, 1850

1830 plan for the Pine Street Sewer

Plan of Pine Street Sewer, 1830

Diagram showing the Philadelphia Water Department's water treatment process

PWD Drinking Water Treatment diagram

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

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

Diagram and description of the typhoid bacteria

Typhoid bacteria diagram, 1905