Germantown is an area in Northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded by Palatine, Quaker, and Mennonite families in 1683 as an independent borough, it was absorbed into Philadelphia in 1854. The area, which is about six miles northwest from the city center, now consists of two neighborhoods: 'Germantown' and 'East Germantown'.
Roxborough is a neighborhood in the Northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is bordered to the southwest, along the Schuylkill River, by the neighborhood of Manayunk, along the northeast by the Wissahickon Creek section of Fairmount Park, and to the southeast by the neighborhood of East Falls. Beyond Roxborough to the northwest is Montgomery County. Roxborough's ZIP code is 19128. Most of Roxborough is in Philadelphia's 21st Ward.
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.
Wissahickon Creek is a tributary of the Schuylkill River in Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties, Pennsylvania.
Fort Mifflin, originally called Fort Island Battery and also known as Mud Island Fort, was commissioned in 1771 and sits on Mud Island on the Delaware River below Philadelphia, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia International Airport.
Johannes Kelpius was a German Pietist, mystic, musician, and writer. He was also interested in the occult, botany, and astronomy. He came to believe with his followers – called the "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness" – that the end of the world would occur in 1694. This belief, based on an elaborate interpretation of Revelation 12:6, anticipated the advent of a heavenly kingdom somewhere in the wilderness during that year. Kelpius felt that the seventeenth-century Province of Pennsylvania, given its reputation for religious toleration at the edge of a barely settled wilderness, was the best place to be. Philadelphia had been founded in 1682, but the city and the Province of Pennsylvania had quickly become a tolerant haven and refuge for many pietist, communitarian, or free-thinking groups who were leaving the Old World for the congenial religious climate of the British colony. Kelpius and his followers crossed the Atlantic and lived in the valley of the Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia from 1694 until his death. It is reported that they lived communally, though they also spent time in solitary meditation in caves and small cells scattered about their common living quarters. Though no sign or revelation accompanied the year 1694, the faithful, known as the Hermits or Mystics of the Wissahickon, continued to live in celibacy, searching the stars and hoping for the end.
Farmar Mill is a historic mill building. The mill was powered by the Wissahickon Creek and is located on Mather's Lane near Skippack Pike, and just west of the historic Bethlehem Pike in the village of Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, in the United States.
Grumblethorpe, in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the home of the Wister family, who lived there for over 160 years. It was built in 1744 as a summer residence, but it became the family's year-round residence in 1793. It is a museum, part of the Colonial Germantown Historic District.
Cliveden, also known as the Chew House, is a historic site owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, located in the Germantown neighborhood of Northwest Philadelphia. Built as a country house for attorney Benjamin Chew, Cliveden was completed in 1767 and was home to seven generations of the Chew family. Cliveden has long been famous as the site of the American Revolutionary War's Battle of Germantown in 1777 as well as for its Georgian architecture.
Woodford is a historic mansion at Ford Road and Greenland Drive in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Built c. 1756, it is the first of Philadelphia's great colonial Georgian mansion houses to be built, and exemplifies the opulence of such houses. A National Historic Landmark, it now a historic house museum open to the public.
Historic RittenhouseTown, sometimes referred to as Rittenhouse Historic District, encompasses the remains of an early industrial community which was the site of the first paper mill in British North America. The mill was built in 1690 by William Rittenhouse and his son Nicholas on the north bank of Paper Mill Run near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The district, off Lincoln Drive near Wissahickon Avenue in Fairmount Park, includes six of up to forty-five original buildings. RittenhouseTown was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark District on April 27, 1992.
The Philadelphia Lazaretto was the first quarantine hospital in the United States, built in 1799, in Tinicum Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The site was originally inhabited by the Lenni Lenape, and then the first Swedish settlers. Nearby Province Island was the site of the confinement of the Christian Moravian Indians who were brought there under protective custody from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1763 when their lives were threatened by the Paxton Boys. The facility predates similar national landmarks such as Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital and Angel Island and is considered both the oldest surviving quarantine hospital and the last surviving example of its type in the U.S.
The Thomas Mill Covered Bridge, aka the Thomas Mill Bridge or the Thomas Mill Road Covered Bridge, is a historic, single-span, wooden covered bridge across the Wissahickon Creek in Wissahickon Valley Park in Northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Wissahickon is a neighborhood in the section of Lower Northwest Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Wissahickon is located adjacent to the neighborhoods of Roxborough and Manayunk, and it is bounded by the Wissahickon Valley Park, Ridge Avenue, Hermit Street, and Henry Avenue. The name of the neighborhood is derived from the Lenni Lenape word wisameckham, for "catfish creek", a reference to the fish that were once plentiful in the Wissahickon Creek.
The Oliver Miller Homestead, site of the James Miller House, is a public museum that commemorates pioneer settlers of Western Pennsylvania. It is located in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania's South Park 10 miles (16 km) south of downtown Pittsburgh in South Park Township.
The Old Germantown Academy and Headmasters' Houses or The Old Campus is an historic, American school campus, the original site of Germantown Academy, located at Schoolhouse Lane and Greene Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The academy moved to a new suburban location in 1965, and the site is currently occupied by the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf.
Wissahickon Valley Park is a large urban park that is located in Northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It protects 2,042 acres (8.26 km2) of woodland surrounding the Wissahickon Creek between the Montgomery County border and the Schuylkill River. For several miles, the creek winds through a dramatic wooded gorge known as the Wissahickon Valley, a National Natural Landmark.
Mellor, Meigs & Howe (1916–28) was a Philadelphia architectural firm best remembered for its Neo-Norman residential designs.
Ridgeland Mansion is an historic two-and-a-half story, gable-roofed house located in west Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. The land was purchased by a yeoman named William Couch in 1718 and the current house was probably constructed sometime between 1752 and 1762.
The Livezey House, also known as Glen Fern, is a historic house and mill on the east side of Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was designated on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places on June 26, 1956.
Front view as drawn by HABS
Side view as drawn by HABS
First floor plan by HABS
Stable on the grounds
