• Source: Mill Creek, Philadelphia

      • Mill Creek is a neighborhood in the West Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It sits between 44th and 52nd Streets, north of Market Street and south of Girard Avenue. It was named for Philadelphia's Mill Creek, which was buried during 19th-century sewer system improvements. In 1961, the sewer collapsed, taking homes with it.


      History and architectural features


      During the early 1800s, Mill Creek was used as a water and power supply source by area lumber companies and gristmills. Sometime after the end of the American Civil War, as Philadelphia's population continued to grow, business and civic leader determined that upgrades were needed to the city's sewer system. One of the projects involved diverting a section of Mill Creek through an underground brick-covered sewer culvert, which was then covered over by landfill. This decision ultimately created "a submerged floodplain" that resulted in sewer collapses during the 20th century.
      In 1849, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia purchased farm land in Mills Creek to create Cathedral Cemetery, the first Catholic cemetery in Philadelphia to support burials due to the influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany.
      The neighborhood was formerly home to the Mill Creek Apartments, a public housing project that was designed by Louis Kahn during the early 1950s. Its three 17-story highrise project towers were demolished in 2002 and replaced with suburban-style low-rise houses, a development named Lucien Blackwell Homes after the congressman.
      Mill Creek was the site of the 2000 "Lex Street Massacre," in which four men killed seven others and wounded three in retaliation for damage to a car, Philadelphia's worst killing spree in modern history.
      The Rudolph Blankenburg School, the Mayer Sulzberger Junior High School, and Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


      References




      External links


      PHA's Lucien Blackwell Homes
      Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice, City Planning and Design, Anne Whiston Spirn
      Tearing Down Louis Kahn, New York Times

    • Source: Mill Creek (Philadelphia)

      • Mill Creek rises in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; runs southeasterly to West Philadelphia, where it enters 19th-century sewer pipes; and debouches roughly five miles later in the Schuylkill River near The Woodlands Cemetery. It starts near Narberth, where its source is buried, then runs free for a mile or so before entering Philadelphia at the Overbrook station.
      The creek, which drains about 5,000 acres (20 km2), gave its name to two neighborhoods in Philadelphia that it flows under.


      Development



      The creek, called Nanganesey by the Lenape Indians in their patent to white settlers, was renamed Quarn Creek by the Swedish settlers. It later took the names Monson's Great Mill Fall, Mill Creek, and Little Mill Creek after the factories it powered at Grays Ferry.
      Originally, Mill Creek was fast-flowing (10 miles per hour) and could discharge 300,000 cubic feet per minute into the Schuylkill. It was known to flood, destroying crops and creating seas of mud.
      In 1834, merchant and banker John Buckman built a 90-foot dam across Mill Creek just south of Market Street at current-day 46th Street. The dam diverted some of the water into a 12-foot-wide mill race that ran parallel to the creek for about 1,100 feet and into a 30-by-60-foot "forebay." The water flowed under Market Street and over waterwheels that powered Buckman's mill.
      As urban development began in West Philadelphia, the city covered several stream beds with cisterns and a layer of fill deep enough to level the land so that it could be platted into a regular street grid.
      In 1866, a land survey determined that Mill Creek should be drained. The covering of Mill Creek began in 1869, encapsulating the watercourse in a 20-foot (6.1 m)-diameter drainpipe said to be the largest sewer pipe in the world at the time. By 1872, the creek was buried south to Baltimore Avenue. Its burial was completed around 1895, allowing the grid of rowhouse development to continue toward the city's western edge at Cobbs Creek.
      Natural erosion, abetted by spotty maintenance of the cistern, has caused occasional collapses of the buildings above. In the 1930s, several homes collapsed on Walnut Street between 43rd and 44th Streets after the creek undermined them. There have been road collapses on 43rd Street, south of Walnut. In 1955, the block of Sansom Street between 43rd and 44th Streets collapsed and was condemned. The creek undermines the roadbed where the Route 34 and Route 13 trolleys cross 43rd Street.
      A prominent feature of Clark Park is its "bowl," once a mill pond fed by the creek.
      Montgomery County has begun an effort to restore the creek's watershed through its Mill Creek Stream Restoration.


      Further reading


      Whiston Spirn, Ann (1998). The Language of Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 160–72. ISBN 0-300-08294-0. - for a discussion of the suppression of Mill Creek in Philadelphia and efforts to recognize the lost stream
      Adam Levine. "From Creek to Sewer: A Philadelphia Story". phillyh2o.org.


      See also



      List of rivers of Pennsylvania


      External links



      "West Philadelphia, "The Genesis of 'The City Across The River'"". Archived from the original on 2019-11-17. Retrieved 2007-10-05.
      "millcreekurbanfarm.org".
      John Frederick Lewis (1924). "The River As It Was, The River As It Is, The River As It Should Be". Philadelphia: City Parks Association.
      Three 1924 photos from Gray's Ferry Bridge north to the outlet of Mill Creek and The Woodlands:
      "Photo 1".
      "Photo 2".
      "Photo 3".
      "1903 chart of Philadelphia's main sewers, including the Mill Creek System], at Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network". PhilaGeoHistory.org.
      Anne Whiston Spirn. "The Buried River". West Philadelphia Landscape Project. Retrieved 2019-06-04.


      References

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