Philadelphia, commonly referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the second-most populous city in the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Philadelphia is known for its extensive contributions to United States history, especially the American Revolution, and served as the nation's capital until 1800. It maintains contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. Philadelphia is the nation's sixth-most populous city with a population of 1,603,797 as of the 2020 census and is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of the world's largest metropolitan regions consisting of 6.245 million residents in the metropolitan statistical area and 7.366 million residents in its combined statistical area.
Robert Smithson was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums and is held in public collections. He was one of the founders of the land art movement whose best known work is the Spiral Jetty (1970).
Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United States but that also includes examples from many countries. As a trend, "land art" expanded boundaries of art by the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials used were often the materials of the Earth, including the soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site, and the sites of the works were often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation was commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.
Andy Goldsworthy is an English sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural and urban settings.
The Schuylkill River is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for 135 miles (217 km) from Pottsville southeast to Philadelphia, where it joins the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries.
Fairmount Park is the largest municipal park in Philadelphia and the historic name for a group of parks located throughout the city. Fairmount Park consists of two park sections named East Park and West Park, divided by the Schuylkill River, with the two sections together totalling 2,052 acres (830 ha). Management of Fairmount Park and the entire citywide park system is overseen by Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, a city department created in 2010 from the merger of the Fairmount Park Commission and the Department of Recreation.
William Rush was a U.S. neoclassical sculptor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is considered the first major American sculptor.
Thomas Doughty was an American artist associated with the Hudson River School.
The Swann Memorial Fountain is an art deco fountain sculpture located in the center of Logan Circle in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
The Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was Philadelphia's second municipal waterworks. Designed in 1812 by Frederick Graff and built between 1812 and 1872, it operated until 1909, winning praise for its design and becoming a popular tourist attraction. It now houses a restaurant and an interpretive center that explains the waterworks' purpose and local watershed history. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 for its architecture and its engineering innovations. It was the nation's first water supply to use paddle wheels to move water.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Park is a park located along the Delaware River in the southernmost point of South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, comprising some 348 acres (1.41 km2) which includes a 146-acre (0.59 km2) golf course, about 125 acres (0.51 km2) of buildings, roadways, pathways for walking, landscaped architecture, and a variety of picnic and recreation areas placed within about 77 acres (310,000 m2) of natural lands including ponds and lagoons.
The Partnership for the Delaware Estuary (PDE) is a regional nonprofit organization working to protect and enhance the Delaware Estuary, where fresh water from the Delaware River mixes with salt water from the Atlantic Ocean. Established in 1996, its mission is to lead science-based and collaborative efforts to improve the tidal Delaware River and Delaware Bay, which spans Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Patricia Johanson is an American artist. Johanson is known for her large-scale art projects that create aesthetic and practical habitats for humans and wildlife. She designs her functional art projects, created with and in the natural landscape, to solve infrastructure and environmental problems, but also to reconnect city-dwellers with nature and with the history of a place. These project designs date from 1969, making her a pioneer in the field of ecological-art Johanson's work has also been classified as Land Art, Environmental Art, Site-specific Art and Garden Art. Her early paintings and sculptures are part of Minimalism.
Mags Harries and Lajos Héder are artists working collaboratively to create public art across the United States from their studio.
The Philadelphia Water Department is the public water utility for the City of Philadelphia. PWD provides integrated potable water, wastewater, and stormwater services for Philadelphia and some communities in Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery counties. PWD is a municipal agency of the City of Philadelphia, and is seated in rented space at the Jefferson Tower in the Market East area of Center City, Philadelphia.
The Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, or Fall Zone, is a 900-mile (1,400 km) escarpment where the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain meet in the eastern United States. Much of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line passes through areas where no evidence of faulting is present.
Jackie Brookner was an ecological artist, writer, and educator. She worked with ecologists, design professionals, engineers, communities, and policy-makers on water remediation/public art projects for parks, wetlands, rivers, and urban stormwater runoff. In these projects, local resources become the focal point of community collaboration and collective creative agency.
Fredericka Foster is an American artist, curator and water activist recognized for her contributions to oil painting and photography. She has been honored as a River Warrior by the Lewis Pugh Foundation for her efforts in raising "awareness about water's profound impact on our socio-economic, environmental, and subconscious realm."
Julie Bargmann is an American landscape architect and educator. Bargmann is Professor Emerita of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, founding principal of D.I.R.T. Studio, a landscape architecture firm, and inaugural recipient of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, an initiative of Washington, D.C.-based The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
Tropical Storm Karen was a system that brought record-breaking rainfall and flooding to southeastern Pennsylvania and other Mid-Atlantic states in October 2013. The twelfth tropical cyclone and eleventh named storm of the well below-average 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, Karen originated from a tropical wave that departed from the west coast of Africa on September 16. After passing south of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, the storm became a tropical cyclone to the northeast of the Yucatán Peninsula. The storm peaked shortly afterward, with 1-minute sustained winds of 65 mph (105 km/h). The storm triggered warnings along the Gulf Coast of the United States, but the storm ultimately degenerated into an open trough in the Gulf of Mexico without making landfall. The remnants of Karen then turned eastward and crossed Florida, before evolving into a nor'easter off the coast of North Carolina, stalling off the Delmarva Peninsula through October 12. The system weakened and drifted back southwestward towards Florida, dissipating off the coast of the state on October 15.
