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

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

Wingohocking Sewer across Penn St.

Wingohocking Sewer across Penn St.

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

Requiem for a stream: Adams Run in Oak Lane

Black-and-white image shows a trolley car emerging from a building with men standing alongside

Filling Low Land: A Story of Ash-Dumping in the Wingohocking Creek Watershed

Black-and-white aerial photo of a creek bend with industrial buildings surrounding it

The Sad History of Frankford Creek

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

Streams, islands, and ferries of early Philadelphia