The Evolution of the Waterfront at Bridesburg, Philadelphia
Bridesburg showing Point No Point at the mouth of the Frankford Creek. Detail from Smedley, Samuel L. Smedley's Atlas of the City of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1861. Free Library of Philadelphia. Boat house at the edge of the Delaware River at Bridesburg, c.1920. Sliker, Charles. Bridesburg at the Waterfront. Sliker Photograph Collection, Atwater Kent Museum, gift of Harry Silcox. .

“I’ve been to Point Lookout

  Point Look In,

  Point No Point,

  And Point Agin.”

From The Daily Evening Telegraph December 10, 1907. Attributed to an early traveler concerning the ‘Points’ along the Delaware River near Bridesburg.

As the bulldozers are poised to move in to reshape Philadelphia’s water front for the city’s future they will inevitably dig up pieces of Bridesburg’s past. Over the last 350 years, the waterfront that surrounds Bridesburg has been home to marshlands, mansions, factories, fishing shacks, steamboat piers and smokestacks.

How has Bridesburg been shaped by the waterfront that surrounds it? And how has that waterfront been shaped by the people of Bridesburg?

This website is an attempt to present and contextualize the historic documents that begin to answer these questions. The focus area follows the landscape along the Frankford Creek from LeFevre Street westward to its confluence with the Delaware River and then southward along the river to Buckius Street.
Satellite image of Bridesburg study area with a portion of the former Frankford Creek to the top of the image, intersection of Buckius Street and the Delaware River is at the bottom of the image near the middle. Image: Google Map.

The website was created as part of a course in Historic Documentation and Archival Research offered through the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and is intended for educational purposes.

Jayne Spector,   21 December 2005