Fairmount Park, Philadelphia

As of March 19, 2008 at 8:30 AM
Steps: 1,887,913
Miles: 796.35

Fairmount Park is Philadelphia's version of New York City's Central Park.

I can take a train from nearby my house to either end of the park and walk the entire length of the park to the other end and catch another train to return home. In my opinion, this is probably the best of "historic Phildelphia".

Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s spurred City Councils to seek a system to provide safe drinking water to the citizens of the city. In 1815 the Center Square water works, built in the center of the city, were replaced by the Fairmount Water Works and its reservoir atop Faire Mount - the current site of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.


Fairmount Water Works - Before the Art Museum - The flat plateau at the top of the hill held the city water supply. The water work buildings pumped the water from the river up the hill to a reservoir.


Fairmount Water Works - After the Art Museum - The water works are in front of the muesum at the river's edge beside a dam. The classical museum building replaced the reservoir.


Lemon Hill

Lemon Hill is just upstream from Faire Mount and directly across the Schuylkill River from the Philadelphia Zoo. The Philadelphia Zoo, also located in Fairmount Park, is on the southwest bank of the river and was the first zoo in the United States.

Around 1770, merchant and financier Robert Morris ** began to accumulate parcels of land along the northeast bank of the Schuylkill River. The estate, known as the Hills, included an elegant greenhouse surrounded by gardens and fruit trees. Finding himself financially overextended by 1799, Morris was forced to sell all of his holdings to satisfy his creditors.

A portion of the property was purchased by Henry Pratt, also a merchant, who built the present house in 1800. He named it Lemon Hill after the famous lemon trees in the Morris greenhouse.

Fairmount Park was officially founded in 1855 when the Lemon Hill estate was dedicated as a public park and renamed Fairmount Park. The Schuylkill River Trail goes through the park along the river for about eight miles.


** Robert Morris, Jr. (January 20, 1734 – May 9, 1806) was an American merchant and a signer to the United States Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He was one of the principal draftsmen as well as signer of the United States Constitution.

Morris was known as the Financier of the Revolution, because of his role in securing financial assistance for the American side in the Revolutionary War. Ironically, he was sent to debtor's prison in later life.