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Refineries (Oil)
Philadelphia’s oil refineries, shown here in a 1980 photograph taken from the Passyunk Street Bridge, were a staple of industrial Philadelphia. (Library of Congress) Philadelphia emerged as a petroleum...
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Pollution
In its various forms, pollution immeasurably shaped the history and geography of Greater Philadelphia. For nearly four centuries, contamination of the region’s air, land, and water reflected the civic...
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Pipelines
The discovery of an oil spring in Titusville, Pennsylvania, followed by the drilling of the first successful well in 1859, touched off an oil rush. (Library of Congress) Reaching hundreds of miles to...
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Philadelphia Gas Works
The Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW), founded in 1836, was in 2015 the largest municipal-owned utility in the United States. While supplying residents with fuel for heating and cooking, PGW also became a...
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Nuclear Power
Mirroring a nation-wide wave of commercial interest in nuclear power plants in the 1950s and 1960s, the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) and other energy companies in Greater Philadelphia jumped at...
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Heating (Home)
The Delaware Valley’s frosty winters have always required residents to heat their homes for months at a time. At the time of the Philadelphia’s founding, the dense forests in its hinterland offered...
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Gas Stations
The widespread adoption of the passenger automobile during the twentieth century altered the physical landscape of Greater Philadelphia and the United States. By the late 1910s, gas stations began to...
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Garbage Barge (Khian Sea)
During the 1980s, as regional landfills closed, it became increasingly difficult for Philadelphia to find places to put its trash and the ash from burning that trash. This dilemma became a global...
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Coal
In the nineteenth century, Philadelphia banks and entrepreneurs played a pivotal role in facilitating the emergence of coal as the nation’s principal energy source for industry, transportation, and...
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