HAER
FAIRMOUNT PARK
© Jane Mork Gibson,
Workshop of the
World (Oliver Evans Press, 1990).
Fairmount Park consists of
approximately four thousand acres and extends along water
courses for fourteen miles. It is a combination of mostly
manicured, landscaped parkland near the center of
Philadelphia along the banks of the Schuylkill River and
several preserved "natural" areas along the borders of
the Wissahickon and Cresheim Creeks in the northwestern
section of the city. 1
Today there is
little evidence of the industrial establishments that
once thrived within the park's limits. The existence of
these industries and the threat which they posed in
polluting the city's water supply taken from the
Schuylkill River were important factors in the official
founding of the park by act of the Pennsylvania Assembly
on March 26, 1867. At that time, the Fairmount Park
Commission was established to extend the several garden
areas that had provided public recreational space before
that date. The borders of the park were extended by
another act passed on April 14, 1868. In the years
following, buildings were razed and support
systems
The park starts at Fairmount Avenue at the present-day
Spring Garden Bridge and with varying parcels of land
bordering the waterways, follows the Schuylkill River
north to the mouth of the Wissahickon, from whence it
continues along that creek to Northwestern and Germantown
Avenues in Chestnut Hill and also along the Cresheim
Creek tributary to Germantown Avenue and along a small
tributary called Paper Mill Run or Monoshone Creek. The
park can be roughly divided into three sections, the East
Park, the West Park, and the Wissahickon Valley.
Extending along the Schuylkill's east bank, the East Park
(Old Park) is the oldest section and includes Fairmount
Water Works—where the Fairmount Gardens of 1835
represent the very beginnings of the park—and Lemon
Hill, acquired by the city in 1844 to protect the purity
of the Schuylkill and in 1855 dedicated to public use.
Across the Schuylkill, the West Park—designated as
parkland in 1867—is most famous as the site of the
U.S. Centennial Exposition in 1876 when the nation
celebrated both its founding and its industrial prowess
and prospects for the future. The third section,
the Wissahickon Valley, became a cradle of industry in
the eighteenth century in the days when water power
determined potential industrial sites. The Wissahickon
and its tributaries provided power for a total of 54
mills, with 23 of them within the limits of today's
Fairmount Park. The increase in construction along the
watershed has affected the flow of water in the streams,
and today the raw power that turned the wheels can only
be seen after a storm or heavy rainfall.
The industrial past of Fairmount Park encompasses a wide
variety of activities. The earliest industries in the
area were the mills of the Wissahickon because this
waterway was of an appropriate size and had a steady flow
of water to provide the necessary power. Richard Townsend
is recorded to have built a grist mill and a saw mill at
the mouth of the Wissahickon between 1686-1689, which he
sold to Andrew Robeson and Charles Saunders in
1690. 2
The first paper
mill in the American colonies was built on Paper Mill Run
for William Rittenhouse, whose partner William Bradford
noted in a letter dated November 18, 1690, that "Samuel
Carpenter and I are Building a Paper Mill about a mile
from thy mills at Skulkill...." 3
These were
successful ventures which were expanded later with
additional mills often belonging to other family members,
and remnants of the installations survive to the present
day.
During succeeding years a wide variety of mills were
constructed in the Wissahickon Valley—grist mills,
saw mills, a log mill for dyes, a nail cutting mill,
paper mills, oil mills, and many kinds of textile mills.
The number of mills diminished over time, due to fires,
freshets, competition with newer, steam-powered mills,
and also Sheriff's sales. Many of those remaining became
large industrial complexes and employed auxiliary steam
power. In 1868 the Fairmount Park Commission began
to acquire the Wissahickon sites, which included
Townsend/Robeson's original mill, Dobsons' Mill (formerly
Townsend's 2nd mill), the Rittenhouse Mill on the
original mill seat plus the mills of Edward H. Amidown,
Nicholas Rittenhouse, and Henry Rittenhouse, Kitchen's
Mill, Livesey's Mill, the Glen Fern Mills (Livesey),
Magarge's Lower and Upper Mills, and Bischoff's Mill (at
Bell's Mill Road). Once taken over by the city, the
buildings were torn down or became derelict and decayed
over the years. In the 1930s the Works Project
Administration (WPA) finished the job in that era's
effort to provide rustic simplicity within the park, and
the WPA demolished or altered most of what remained of
buildings, mill races and dams. A significant enhancement
to the park area in 1906 was the gift (by the
Houston-Woodward-Henry Family) of a portion of the
Cresheim Valley that contained additional mills.
Land above Bell's Mill Road was also a gift of the
Houstons.
The very beginnings of Fairmount Park have an industrial
flavor, for while the South Garden and the landscaped
walkways at Fairmount Water Works in 1835 provided a much
appreciated urban public recreational space, it was the
technology of the pumping operations that gave the site
its unique quality. The first building for the Fairmount
Water Works was constructed beginning in 1812 on a rocky
ledge where quarrying was an industrial pursuit, at the
base of the highest point near the original city limit; a
reservoir for the water works was built on top of the
hill. Additions to the water pumping facility in 1822
included a mill house for eight water wheels, a dam
"thrown" across the Schuylkill, and a set of locks on the
west bank for the use of the Schuylkill Navigation
Company's slackwater canal system that allowed boats to
operate up the river to the coal country. In
subsequent years the facility was further enlarged and
hydraulic turbines replaced the water wheels.
It was the location of the water intakes for the city's
water works on the Schuylkill—at Fairmount, at West
Philadelphia opposite Lemon Hill, at Montgomery Drive,
and at Spring Garden by the rock tunnel—that was
the compelling factor when additional land was acquired
for the park. The original plan of William Penn had
established country estates along the Schuylkill, but as
the nineteenth century city grew and industry flourished,
a variety of business pursuits began to occupy land on
the river banks and on adjacent land. On the east bank,
despite the pollution caused by the steamboats docking
there, the Public Landing immediately north of the
Fairmount Forebay remained until the early years of the
twentieth century, functioning as part of the facilities
of the park. Other industrial sites were gradually
acquired and put out of business. The Morris & Towne
Rolling Mill was located in the "Flat Iron" area at
Pennsylvania and Landing Avenues, in the vicinity of the
Lincoln statue and the present Azalea Garden. Further
upriver along the east bank the Knickerbocker Ice Company
had two ice houses and the Eagle Ice Company one ice
house. There were also the Engel & Wolfe brewery and
beer vaults, and the Fountain Green Rolling Mills. The
park became only a narrow strip at East Falls and did not
include the mills there that from the early nineteenth
century discharged their industrial waste into the river;
before construction of Fairmount Dam, the natural fall
line at East Falls had made this a very early industrial
area. A large part of the Powers & Weightman
Company's industrial establishment that extended from
Falls Bridge almost to the Wissahickon, and produced
chemicals and pharmaceuticals, was included in the lands
appropriated for the park.
The west bank of the Schuylkill was not as heavily
industrialized as the east bank because it had continued
as landed estates, but lifestyles were changing in the
nineteenth century and this land was changing hands. In
1862 there were small industries directly across from
Fairmount Water Works, and the Cold Spring Ice Company
was just south of the Girard Avenue Bridge and the
Knickerbocker Ice Company was further upstream. The Park
Oil Refinery at 38th Street and Girard Avenue was small,
but the large Belmont Petroleum Refinery constructed in
1865 just north of the Columbia Bridge may have acted as
a stimulus to the extension of the park soon after. In
1866 a broadside proclaimed that Wissahickon Oil Wells
were being drilled at the junction of the Schuylkill
River and Wissahickon Creek, and one well was pumping
fifty barrels of oil a day. 4
A more
traditional threat to the purity of the water was the
operations of William Simpson's large calico print and
dye works just south of Falls Bridge, the Washington
Print Works.
It is the bridges over the Schuylkill and its tributaries
that constitute part of the industrial archeology of
Fairmount Park. At the Upper Ferry, the location of
today's Spring Garden Bridge, nothing remains of the
site's two most notable bridges, the wooden Upper Ferry
Bridge by Wernwag (1812-38)—called "The Colossus of
Fairmount" with an span of 343 feet—and the Wire
Bridge by Charles Ellet (1842-70), the first wire
suspension bridge for general traffic in the United
States. However, at the far end of the South Garden at
Fairmount Water Works, there remains a brass plaque on
the abandoned eastern masonry abutment of the
double-decked truss bridge designed by Strickland Kneass
with the iron works supplied by the Keystone Bridge
Company (erected 1873-75). Proceeding upriver, the extant
bridges have been important in the development of
Philadelphia by providing a means to link the city with
the countryside, with a major focus Philadelphia's
primacy in rail transportation—the Girard Avenue
Bridge (1874), the Fairmount Park Trolley Bridge (1897)
now called the Strawberry Mansion Bridge, the Columbia
Bridge (1886) at the location of the 1834 bridge that
carried the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad across the
Schuylkill, the Reading Railroad "Stone Bridge" (1855),
the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Bridge (1889), and the
Falls Bridge (1895). Also, the first wire suspension
bridge in the country—for pedestrians
only—was built by Josiah White at East Falls in
1816, near the present-day Twin Bridges. Recent
nominations for the National Register of Historic Places
include the three-span stone arch bridge of coursed
ashlar (1888) which carries Ridge Road over Wissahickon
Creek near the site of Robeson's mills, the Wissahickon
Memorial Bridge (1931) with its monumental concrete
arches faced with stone rising high above the Wissahickon
at Henry Avenue, and the Walnut Lane Memorial Bridge
(1950) which was the longest open spandrel arch bridge of
its time (233 feet) and is the first prestressed concrete
girder bridge in the United States. Further up the
Wissahickon Valley, the restored Thomas Mill Road Covered
Bridge (1855) survives and is listed on the National
Register of Historic Places. An unfortunate recent
loss is the wrought iron Cresheim Valley Viaduct (c.1884)
which brought the Pennsylvania Railroad to Chestnut Hill
and was replaced with a concrete and steel structure
(1988-89).
Many of the transportation systems that existed within
the park have been replaced by modern roadways that
provide access to its facilities, although Conrail/Amtrak
uses old right-of-ways of the Pennsylvania Railroad and
the Reading Railroad in the West Park. The towpath for
the Schuylkill Navigation Company's slackwater canal
system ran along the west bank of the Schuylkill from the
western end of the mule bridge at Manayunk to the canal
locks at Fairmount Dam, although steam tugs were
generally employed in this section. All traces of the
canal system were eradicated by the construction of West
River Drive and the Schuylkill Expressway in the 1950s.
including the canal locks, but the c.1980 fish ladder has
utilized a portion of the lock wall.
From 1834 to 1854 the Inclined Plane that extended
roughly from the Columbia Bridge to Belmont Mansion
provided a means for the early railway cars of the
Philadelphia and Columbia Railway to ascend 180 feet from
the level of the river to the Belmont Plateau above using
a windlass and a stationary steam engine; the cut for the
roadbed made a still visible depression in the land which
followed Belmont Glen part of the way. The roadbed was
later used by Fairmount Park trolleys (1897-1946).
5
The Fairmount
Park Railroad constructed for the Centennial in 1876 to
allow visitors to travel within the park grounds no
longer remains, although for several years the trolley
utilized portions of the track. The innovative early
monorail Elevated Railway (1876) that transported
passengers over a deep ravine near the Horticultural
Building at the Centennial likewise is no
more.
While not a true industrial building, Memorial Hall,
which was the Centennial's Art Gallery in 1876, stands as
a monument to the celebration of the nation's industrial
achievements in its first one hundred years. The
temporary Main Exhibition Building was directly in front
of it, next to Machinery Hall with its great Corliss
Engine providing power for the exhibits. A remarkable
scale model of the Centennial buildings and grounds that
was constructed in 1894 under the direction of John
Baird, the Chairman of the Centennial Finance Committee,
was presented to the city and is on display in the
basement of Memorial Hall. From the model the viewer can
gain a sense of the extent and magnificence of the
Centennial when the nation was granted its place in the
world as an industrial power.
Philadelphia's need for a "pure and wholesome" water
supply caused the city to utilize the water of the
Schuylkill River for almost two centuries, with the
construction of various pump houses and storage
reservoirs along its banks. On the east bank Fairmount
Water Works (1812) was decommissioned as a pumping
station in 1911 and is being restored for adaptive
re-use; the site of the Spring Garden Water Works
(1844-1909) is now the Glendenning Rock Garden; and the
Queen Lane Pumping Station (1895) is still in operation
near the City Line Bridge with a state-of-the-art
filtration plant and reservoir on Henry Avenue outside
the park area. The Philadelphia Museum of Art now
occupies the site of the Fairmount Reservoir, once the
city's sole water storage facility, but the East Park
Reservoir located within the park area near Diamond
Street and constructed to expand the water storage system
in the 1870s, is still a part of the city's water system.
On the west bank of the Schuylkill River, the Belmont
Pumping Station (1870) at the foot of Montgomery Drive
continues to function, and the extensive Belmont
Filtration Beds and Reservoir are outside the park area.
Perhaps the most significant of all the existing
archeological features is the Fairmount Dam, a crib
dam "thrown" across the Schuylkill (1819-1821) and
repaired and extended several times. The construction of
this dam created a "pond" up the river as far as Flat
Rock Dam in Manayunk, covering the natural fall line at
East Falls and providing a wide expanse of water to be
enjoyed by oarsmen and by the public visiting the park,
as well as providing a reservoir for the city water
supply. The dam changed the Schuylkill from a
fast-moving, self-cleansing river to one that is subject
to silting and the retention of pollutants. Today
the water flowing so picturesquely over the dam, formerly
diverted to turn the water wheels and the hydraulic
turbines which pumped some of the water to the reservoirs
atop "Faire Mount," has become an aesthetic part of the
cityscape, seldom identified as an important source of
industrial water power in yesteryear.
Fairmount Park's historical antecedents are generally
referred to as being associated with the estates and
activities of the wealthy—Penn's "Green Countrie
Town"—but the industrial past of the park should be
remembered. The nineteenth century was an
industrial heyday and Philadelphia accepted the
challenges presented, as indicated by the many mills in
operation. The probable continuing division of the
estates into parcels which could provide a river-front
location for industry is an equally important aspect of
the park's history. Without foresight and the recognition
of this possibility by Philadelphia leaders in 1867, the
oil refineries of Girard Point could have been located at
what was once the Belmont Petroleum Refinery near
Montgomery Drive on the west bank of the Schuylkill,
within what is now the heart of Fairmount Park.
1 This overview concerns the
Fairmount Park boundaries as they are generally
perceived; in recent years, additional city land from
many sections of Philadelphia has been added to what was
originally Fairmount Park.
2 James J. Magee, Jr.,
"Ancient
Mills of the Wissahickon," Germantown Telegraph, August
11, 1933.
3 George Allen,
"The
Rittenhouse Paper Mill and Its Founders,"
Mennonite
Quarterly Review, 1942, Vol. 16, pp. 108-128, as quoted
by John Milner Associates, Inc., A Master Plan Study for
Historic Rittenhouse Town, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, 1988, p. 13.
4 "Wissahickon
Oil Wells!" [broadside], 1866, (Fairmount
Park Historical Files). Refining of petroleum had
become a sizable business in 1866 when nearly two million
gallons were refined in Philadelphia, at locations
principally on the Schuylkill River. See Edwin T.
Freedley, Philadelphia
and Its Manufactures, (Philadelphia, 1859), p.
432.
5 Joseph Jackson,
Encyclopedia
of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia,
1933), pg. 779. See also John C. Trautwine,
Jr., "The
Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad of 1834,"
Vol. 2, No. 7,
1915, p. 152.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to
John McIlhenny, Fairmount Park Historian, for information
on many sites, especially Belmont Petroleum Refinery and
Washington Print Works. Thanks to Richard Boardman,
Librarian in the Map Department of the Free Library of
Philadelphia, for knowledgeable assistance with the
collections. Thanks also to John Mayer for information on
the Fairmount Park Trolley and the bridges over the
Schuylkill River. Thanks to Lisabeth Holloway, Germantown
Historical Society, for assistance with the collection.
Thanks to Harold E. Spaulding for research material on
the Wissahickon Paper Mill. Thanks to Drew Brown of the
Philadelphia Water Department who provided information on
the Belmont Pumping Station.
Resources:
Fairmount Park
bibliography