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.

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

The Water and Drainage History of Philadelphia, Part 7

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

The Sad History of Frankford Creek

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

Archival Storytelling: A snowy Super Bowl Sunday at Sydenham & Dauphin

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

Black-and-white image of a body of water with trees and shoreline in the far distance

Delaware River at Arch Street from the New Jersey side, 1914

Color image showing lines drawn on grass, a road, a small underpass, trees and some caption text

Drawing Dock Creek (2008)

State House Garden, Philadelphia, 1800

The City and Port of Philadelphia on the River Delaware from Kensington, 1800

Philadelphia the Manufacturing and Industrial Capital map, 1906