Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center

On Friday, July 23rd our group visited the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center. It is located at 640 Waterworks Drive in Philly of course. TO get there we took SEPTA's orange line subway to Broad & Gerard and then caught the 15 trolley to 27th & Gerard. After this, we walked about two to three blocks before arriving.

Upon arriving, I noticed that the building looked old, but in tip-top shape.It's composed of beige colored bricks, and sections of the water works (where the water wheels used to be) are submerged under water. Before it became an interpretive center, the Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia was our nation's first water treatment plant. In the late 1700's civic committee members chose a man named Frederick Graft to design a waterworks on the eastern bank of the Schulykill river, that would provide the citizens of Philadelphia with clean water, thus lowering the number of yellow fever cases.

The waterworks at Fairmount was sucessful for a while, until 1880's. Due to the industrialization of the area, the Schulykill was now a public sewer as well as the city's source of drinking water. Heavy pollution of the Schulykill's once pristine waters caused the water works to close down in 1909. Some time after it's closing it became an aquarium, public pool, and eventually the interpretive center that stands today.

During our visit, I learned alot of things that I didn't know before. For instance, before this trip I never knew that Philadelphia housed the country's first water treatment plant, or that wooden pipes once delivered water to Philly's citizens. My favorite exhibit in the whole center was a massive sculpture about pollution. It was very colorful and featured signs that said things about how pollution affects the environment.