Subjects Landscape Changes

Filling valleys and other lowlands, cutting down high ground, piping streams into sewers, filling marshland, dredging and damming streams and rivers, and any other activities or infrastructure designed to alter the original topography of the city to more readily accommodate real estate development.

Map Lovers’ Monday: Topography of Philadelphia from 1863

Water History: Repurposing Old Infrastructure

Sandy Run Watershed and the Holmesburg Water Works

Photograph of Roberts Mill on Wingohocking Creek in Germantown, built in the late 17th century. (Photograph by J. C. Browne, 1871. Castner Collection/Free Library of Philadelphia)

Roberts Mill, Wingohocking Creek, 1871

2008 map showing historic Dock Creek with adjacent historical features

Map of Historic Dock Creek

Colored ink drawing showing drainage areas and sewer inlets in Philaelphia in the early 19th century

Drainage area plan, early 19th century

1848 Pine Street sewer plan showing an outlet into the Delaware River

Pine Street sewer plan, 1848

Wingohocking Sewer outfall into Frankford Creek

Schuylkill River at Rockland Landing (Picturesque America)

Plans and maps of the Pennypack Creek Watershed in Philadelphia

Wingohocking Sewer across Penn St.

Wingohocking Sewer across Penn St.

Buried Treasures No. 1: The Franklin Sugar Refinery

The ecology of Center City, Philadelphia (in case you didn’t know there was any)

History of Belfield (1934)

Early photographs of Fairmount and vicinity, 1848

Early visions of Philadelphia’s airport

Black-and-white diagram showing streets and the Little Tacony Creek

Frankford Creek Watershed: A historical overview of the Philadelphia section

Report on channelization of Frankford Creek for flood control (1947)

Frankford Creek Watershed Historical Timeline

Frankford Creek Watershed

Down Under III: A walk in the Dobson’s Run Storm Relief Sewer, June 15, 2010

Color image of a grassy field with trees and buildings surrounding it and white lines drawn on the grass mimicking the path of a creek.

Drawing Dock Creek

Down Under, Part 2: Beaver Creek as it appears today

Overbrook, as it was