Mill Creek is a neighborhood in the

West Philadelphia West Philadelphia, nicknamed West Philly, is a section of the city of Philadelphia. Although there are no officially defined boundaries, it is generally considered to reach from the western shore of the Schuylkill River, to City Avenue to the n ...

section of

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States. It sits between 44th and 52nd Streets, north of Market Street and south of Girard Avenue. It was named for Philadelphia's Mill Creek, which was buried during 19th-century sewer system improvements. In 1961, the sewer collapsed, taking homes with it.

History and architectural features

During the early 1800s, Mill Creek was used as a water and power supply source by area lumber companies and gristmills. Sometime after the end of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

, as Philadelphia's population continued to grow, business and civic leader determined that upgrades were needed to the city's sewer system. One of the projects involved diverting a section of Mill Creek through an underground brick-covered sewer culvert, which was then covered over by landfill. This decision ultimately created "a submerged floodplain" that resulted in sewer collapses during the 20th century. In 1849, the

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia The Archdiocese of Philadelphia () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in southeastern Pennsylvania in the United States. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia originally included all of Pennsylvania and Dela ...

purchased farm land in Mills Creek to create

Cathedral Cemetery Cathedral Cemetery, also known as Old Cathedral Cemetery, is a historic Catholic cemetery established by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1849 in the Mill Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was ...

, the first Catholic cemetery in Philadelphia to support burials due to the influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The neighborhood was formerly home to the Mill Creek Apartments, a

public housing Public housing, also known as social housing, refers to Subsidized housing, subsidized or affordable housing provided in buildings that are usually owned and managed by local government, central government, nonprofit organizations or a ...

project that was designed by

Louis Kahn Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky; – March 17, 1974) was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. Whil ...

during the early 1950s. Its three 17-story highrise project towers were demolished in 2002 and replaced with

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...

an-style low-rise houses, a development named Lucien Blackwell Homes after the

congressman A member of congress (MOC), also known as a congressman or congresswoman, is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The t ...

. Mill Creek was the site of the 2000 " Lex Street Massacre," in which four men killed seven others and wounded three in retaliation for damage to a car, Philadelphia's worst killing spree in modern history. The Rudolph Blankenburg School, the Mayer Sulzberger Junior High School, and Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital are listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

References

External links

PHA's Lucien Blackwell Homes

Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice, City Planning and Design
Anne Whiston Spirn

New York Times {{West Philadelphia Neighborhoods in Philadelphia West Philadelphia