Lithograph showing mules walking on towpaths pulling canal boats in the Schuylkill River in the foreground. Also shows distant views of West Fairmount Park properties, including Belmont Mansion, the estate house and country seat of Judge Richard Peters; the smokestack of the Belmont Waterworks engine house, designed by Frederick Graff in the late 1860s; and Mount Pleasant Mansion (i.e. Arnold Mansion) built after designs by Thomas Nevil 1761-1765 for Captain John Macpherson. Includes a locomotive traveling north on the west bank of the river in the right background. Macpherson, a privateer during the Seven Years’ War, purchased the estate with profits from these operations. Free white and Black laborers, indentured servants, and at least four enslaved people of African descent, whose names are unknown, worked on the plantation. In 1779, General Benedict Arnold purchased Mount Pleasant for his wife Peggy Shippen, but they never occupied the house. In 1792, General Jonathan Williams purchased the mansion. The City of Philadelphia purchased the property from the Williams family in 1869. On behalf of the city, the Philadelphia Museum of Art restored the house in 1926., Title from item., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Cataloging funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-506-19-10), 2010-2012., Kollner advertised four volumes of small folio pictures, including "Bits of Nature and Some Art Products, in Fairmount Park ..." in 1878. Several of the lithographs from this volume were based on sketches he executed in the 1840s.
Creator
Kollner, Augustus, 1813-1906
Date
[ca. 1878]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department albums - Kollner [*Am 1878 Kol 2086.F.7]
