This monumental 22-by-94-inch horizontal panorama documents the Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia—the historic pumping station that supplied the city’s drinking water from 1815 until 1909 and whose Greek Revival architecture made it one of America’s most celebrated early engineering landmarks. The nearly eight-foot width captures the facility’s extent along the Schuylkill River.

Created in 1989, the work documents what was once the most visited tourist attraction in America after Niagara Falls. The Water Works combined functional necessity with aesthetic ambition: neo-classical pavilions housing pumping machinery that raised river water to the reservoir serving Philadelphia’s population. The architecture proclaimed that infrastructure could be both utilitarian and beautiful.

The extreme horizontal format emphasizes the Water Works’ linear arrangement along the riverbank, the composition capturing the relationship between architecture, river, and the Art Museum that now rises above the site. The photo collage technique fragments this historically significant view while revealing the spatial relationships that made the Water Works both engineering achievement and picturesque destination.

The Water Works’ transition from infrastructure to tourist attraction to abandonment to restoration parallels the changing relationship between cities and their industrial heritage. Philadelphia restored the complex as an interpretive center for watershed education, the buildings that once pumped water now teaching visitors about water quality and environmental stewardship.

This panorama documents the Water Works as architectural landmark, capturing the Greek Revival facades that generations of visitors admired while the pumping machinery beneath powered municipal water supply.