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

Schuylkill River at Rockland Landing (Picturesque America)

Wingohocking Sewer across Penn St.

Wingohocking Sewer across Penn St.

Black-and-white reproduction of the title page of an old periodical

19th century life in South Philadelphia’s marshland

Bird's eye view of Delaware River

Bird’s eye view of Delaware River and Philadelphia, about 1840