Topics Sanitation

Water Bureau Newspaper Scrapbook, 1942-1952

Frankford Creek Watershed Historical Timeline

Color image of a grassy field with trees and buildings surrounding it and white lines drawn on the grass mimicking the path of a creek.

Drawing Dock Creek

Newspaper Clipping Scrapbooks of Frederic Graff Jr.,Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Department: Part 1, 1854-1857

Board of Health Newspaper Clipping Scrapbooks at City Archives of Philadelphia, 1891-1908

Sewers, Pollution, and Public Health in 19th Century Philadelphia

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

Drainage and Sewerage Report, 1853

Dealing with the city’s wastes in the mid-19th century

Dauphin and Sydenham car crash, Jan. 17, 1978

Receipt from privy cleaning by the Frankford Odorless Excavating Company, 1885

Privy Cleaning Receipt, 1885

William Penn balks at drinking the "mixed drink" offered him: Schuylkill water, mixed with pollution from the upstream sources named. Editorial cartoon by Fred Morgan, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 6, 1899. One of a series of cartoons drawn by Morgan protesting the state of the city's drinking water and trying to encourage the passage of legislation authorizing the construction of a water filtration system.

Half a Century of Clean Water