Frankford Creek on July 11, 1934:
A series by the Philadelphia City
Photographer
This series, working upstream from the bridge at Bridge
Street to the bridge at Wingohocking Street, was probably taken in
response to concerns about flooding along the creek which are recorded in
various newspaper articles of the same period. Unlike most groups of similar
photographs, this one is made uniquely valuable because of its complete coverage of the above area, and the typewritten index pages which identify the exact location and direction of each image. View those pages with the following links:
Photo nos. 34579-34612 (121 Kb)
Photo nos. 34613-34639 (103 Kb)
As is evident from the way the following pairs of thumbnails mirror each other, the photographer seemed to have his camera on a tripod, and swiveled it first one way, and then the other, at each streamside location.
For those unfamiliar with the original course of Frankford Creek, which these photographs represent, it should be noted that the creek once took a sharp northeast turn through Bridesburg, emptying into the Delaware River at the Frankford Arsenal. Only a small portion of that original section, from about Bridge Street to the Delaware, now remains, and it serves mainly as an outlet for a large storm sewer. The diversion channel that now carries the creek directly to the Delaware just south of the Betsy Ross Bridge was completed in 1956 as the final piece of a ten-year flood control project.
The original photographs are either contact prints from 8x10 glass plate
negatives, or prints from 4x5 negatives. They were scanned as part of my research into the Tacony-Frankford Watershed, conducted in June 2002 for the Philadelphia Water Department/Office of Watersheds.--Adam Levine
All Images Copyright 2003
by the Philadelphia Water Department
All Rights Reserved
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