Still Image

Louis I. Kahn (left), with G. Holmes Perkins, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Fine Arts (second from left), and students. Kahn planned Mill Creek Homes. At Penn, 1957–61, Kahn designed Richards and Goddard Laboratories, today a National Historic Landmark.

Louis I. Kahn’s diagram of his comprehensive plan for Mill Creek Homes. The drawing shows Aspen Street as the primary civic street of the development. Note Kahn’s designation of the high-rise apartment group as the Mill Creek “Acropolis.”   

Mill Creek Homes, a modernist public housing project designed by architect Louis I. Kahn, 1953–55; in its first phase consisting of three 17-storey elevator towers at 46th St. & Fairmount Ave. overlooking a cluster of two- and three-story houses on Aspen St.

Completed in 1960, Mantua Hall, an 18-storey elevator tower located in Mantua on the 3500 block of Fairmount Avenue, was typical of high density, high-rise public housing constructed in large cities in the two postwar decades.

This undated photo taken for the City Parks Association of Philadelphia shows remains of West End Mill in their alignment with Catherine Avenue. The top of the S-curve access road aligns with Cedar Avenue. 

This 1952 photo shows the pre-tunnel relationship of the rapid-transit El to the trolley tracks beneath it. One set of tracks continues west; another set bends southwest on Woodland Avenue from its intersection with 32nd and Market streets. Thirtieth Street Station appears upper left. 

Market Street Elevated in 1928, showing street widening near 32nd St.

This 1956 photo shows the demolition of the 32nd St. station of the Market Street El. Removal of above-street tracks extended to 45th St., and the El stations at 36th and 40th streets were taken down.  

This 1956 photo shows a train arriving from the 45th Street portal at the 46th Street station of the Market Street Elevated. Remnant tracks extending east from 45th Street are in the process of removal.  

Nearly 70 years removed from tunnel digging, this photo of the Market Street corridor at 36th Street shows no traces of the trains that rumble below the surface.