Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center

Located on the Schuylkill River side of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the Fairmount Water Works. One of the oldest municipal water systems in the country Philadelphia's is quite interesting. Water was drawn from the Schuylkill originally to a pumping station on the site of City Hall. Unfortunately that station was under-capacity from day one. Bt 1815 a new pumping station was built below Fair Mount, a high plateau above any other site in the city at that point, so anything flowing down from it would do so by gravity. Over time the plant expanded and modernized-using the most effiecent water turbines of the era to power the pump up to the top of the reservoir.
By 1909 Fairmount Water Works was past ready to be shut down, because the river had gotten so polluted from upstream. In fact Fairmount probably should have been shut down several years before it was, by the time it closed only those who couldn't afford bottled water still used the water from the tap. Notably this is the only veiled mention of anything concerning class in the entire exhibit. It is next to the only mention of women in the entire exhibit both about the closing of the waterworks and the starting of a sand filtration program.
It doesn't show if class and women paid a part in the establishment of the waterworks-they probably did-it puts that story solely in the hands of the benevolent "city fathers".
That being said, it still is an interesting museum about the water supply of Philadelphia, because not only does it talk about the waterworks, it talks about present problems with water pollution-while being careful not to blame the city for any of it, possibly because it is funded with city money. I will find out more about this when I speak to the director (I hope to use it for my exhibit review)
One other interesting fact is that while the museum was used as the Philadelphia Aquarium many fish became ill and some died because they used the same polluted unfiltered water that closed the waterworks for human consumption for the fish.
It is free, and definetly warrants a visit, even if someone is just walking through fairmount, its a short hop up the parwkay from the Franklin Institute.