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.

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

Buried Treasures No. 1: The Franklin Sugar Refinery

History of Belfield (1934)

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 in the context of the development of Philadelphia’s sewers and sewage treatment system

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

Overbrook, as it was. A brief history of the Overbrook neighborhood of Philadelphia, focusing on changes in the natural landscape.

Technical drawing showing streets and sewers

Leverington Avenue Stormwater Sewer

Cobbs Creek: A Brief Historical Overview by Adam Levine

Aramingo Sewer, view near Hughes & Patterson and Beach Street Bridge, March 15, 1902

Aramingo Canal, Then and Now