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

Schuylkill River at Rockland Landing (Picturesque America)

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

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

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

Birkinbine Schuylkill Hydrographical Survey 1861-66

Two reports on the state of the Schuylkill River, 1867

Black-and-white photograph depicts a large brick sewer tube lying on a barren landscape

Streams, islands, and ferries of early Philadelphia

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

19th century life in South Philadelphia’s marshland

Birkinbine Schuylkill Hydrographical Survey 1861-66

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