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.

Repurposing Old Infrastructure: Water History Video 5

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

Early photographs of Fairmount and vicinity, 1848

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

The Water and Drainage History of Philadelphia, Part 7

Birkinbine Schuylkill Hydrographical Survey 1861-66

Two reports on the state of the Schuylkill River, 1867

“Fairmount Waterworks. From the forebay.” (From nature & on stone G. Lehman; Published by C.G. Childs & G. Lehman, 1833. Free Library of Philadelphia, Print & Picture Collection)

Fairmount Water Works from the forebay, 1833

Birkinbine Schuylkill Hydrographical Survey 1861-66

Schuylkill River Hydrographical Survey 1861-66 by H. P. M. Birkinbine

Race Bridge, Fair Mount Water Works, 1834 (Graff05.63)

Race Bridge, Fairmount Water Works, 1834

View of Fairmount Water Works, ca. 1827

Lemon Hill and Sedgley Park, Graff Jr., 1851 (Graff05.21)

Plan of Lemon Hill and Sedgley Park, Fairmount and Adjoining Property, 1851