Schuylkill River from below the South Street Bridge, 1873

A black-and-white (and likely the original) version of a print held elsewhere in color on Water History PHL, this image was one of several on this site that were published in William Cullen Bryant's Picturesque America. It's worth keeping in mind, when looking at this image and others in the series, that the U.S. at the time was less than 10 years removed from the end of the Civil War; the air of romanticism that accompanies the images in this collection was hard-won.