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.

Cobbs Creek in the Days of the Old Powder Mill

Requiem for a stream: Adams Run in Oak Lane

Requiem for a stream: Still House Run in Manayunk

Black-and-white image of a creek with people around it and a large building behind it

Dock Creek Sewer in 1849: A report on its condition made to City Councils

Cobbs Creek: A Brief Historical Overview by Adam Levine

The Worry of the Wires

From Creek To Sewer

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

Aramingo Canal, Then and Now

Drainage and Sewerage Report, 1853

Birkinbine Schuylkill Hydrographical Survey 1861-66

Two reports on the state of the Schuylkill River, 1867

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

Mill Creek Sewer under construction, 1883

“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