Details
Creator M'Clees, Jas. E. (James E.) photographer.
Title Engine house of the Twenty-fourth Ward Water Works. Designed and constructed by Birkinbine & Trotter, engineers and contractors, Philadelphia. [graphic].
Date ca. 1854
Physical Description 1 photographic print: salted paper; 8 x 17 cm.(3.25 x 6.75 in.)
Description View showing the engine house at the water works also known as the West Philadelphia Water Works, completed circa 1855, on the west bank of the Schuylkill River above the Fairmount Dam. The engine house built after the designs of engineers Birkinbine & Trotter, contained two boiler rooms, sleeping rooms for the engineers, and storerooms. Also shows two men standing near a fence in the foreground and the smokestack at the waterworks in the background.
Notes Name of photographer from duplicate in private collection.
Title from accompanying label.
Originally part of a series of eleven scrapbooks compiled by Philadelphia antiquarian Charles A. Poulson in the late 1850s entitled "Illustrations of Philadelphia" volume 5, page 70? The scrapbooks contained photographs of 18th-century public, commercial, and residential buildings in the city of Philadelphia collected by Poulson to document the vanishing architectural landscape.
Birkinbine & Trotter was a partnership between Philadelphia engineers Henry P.M. Birkinbine and Edward H. Trotter (1814-1872)
Reproduced in Kenneth Finkel's Nineteenth century photography in Philadelphia (New York: Dover Publications, Inc. in cooperation with the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1980), entry #97.
Biographical / historical note McClees, a prominent Philadelphia photographer and daguerreotypist, produced some of the earliest paper photographic views of Philadelphia between 1853 and 1859.
Subject Twenty-Fourth Ward Water Works (Philadelphia, Pa.)
Waterworks -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Geographic subject Schuylkill River (Pa.)
West Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pa.)
Genre Salted paper prints -- 1850-1860.
Associated name PA. Philadelphia.
Associated name Birkinbine & Trotter, engineer.
Provenance Poulson, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1789-1866, collector.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| photo - McClees - Public Utilities [(5)2526.F.4a]
Accession number (5)2526.F.4a