From his family’s home in Philadelphia, the young Thomas Moran easily found scenes to challenge his artistic talents, as seen in watercolors such as Bridge over the Schuylkill, Philadelphia (02.798) and this sketch, Fairmount Water Works. Although Moran is best known for his landscapes, the artist did not shun the architectural and engineering wonders of the city. The Fairmount Water Works, housed in buildings inspired by ancient Greco-Roman structures, was one of Philadelphia’s most celebrated technological achievements.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the city was beset by several deadly typhoid fever epidemics, the result of a polluted water supply, and the city council instituted projects to bring fresh water from the Schuylkill River to Philadelphians. Eventually the water distribution system was housed in the Neoclassical buildings on the banks of the Schuylkill in an area that became Fairmount Park. The Fairmount Water Works was an emblem of civic pride, representative of the benefits of good government, which responded to the needs of its citizens during an ongoing public health crisis. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Fairmount Water Works was one of the nation’s most popular architectural images, depicted in paintings and prints and on decorative objects.¹

In Moran’s sketch, the classically inspired buildings that housed the pump stations, sit atop the arches of the dam that diverted water from the Schuylkill.² The design for the archways is reminiscent of the ancient Roman aqueducts that brought life-giving water to cities throughout Rome’s empire. In less than a decade Moran would see the inspirations for these arches in person, depicting them in sketches such as The Great Aqueduct of the Campagna, Rome (02.860).

—Sandra Pauly, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Moran Collection Research, 2021

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¹ Marks, “Palladianism on the Schuylkill,” 201–15. The Water Works was completed in stages, beginning with Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s tunnel from the Schuylkill to a pump station located in Philadelphia’s Centre Square, and culminating in a dam on the river that diverted water to pumping stations in Fairmount Park. Although Latrobe is often given credit for the Water Works, his assistant Frederick Graff was responsible for the final project.
² Moran often revisited his field sketches, sometimes more than a decade later. In 1871, for example, the artist provided illustrations for an article on Fairmount Park that appeared in the January issue of Scribner’s Monthly. The first illustration presents the Water Works at the center of the composition, and it closely resembles this sketch. Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 76.