The City’s Underground Revealed

 (Rescheduled from 1/8/20)

Adam Levine

ABSTRACT:

Few people know that historic topographical maps are available for a part of Philadelphia, in a GIS layer.  Some of these maps are more than 200 years old, and they reveal hills and valleys, buildings, quarries, hundreds of miles of buried stream beds, original shorelines and tidal marshes, and many other features that were buried as the city was leveled for development. Besides providing a fascinating peek at the city’s historical landscape and being beautiful artifacts in themselves, these plans have helped the Philadelphia Water Department site its GIS structures, and could offer a variety of other uses for anyone doing any excavations in the city as part of their work. Adam Levine will talk about the five year project in which these plans were discovered, and share some of his favorites.  

SPEAKER BIO: 

Since 1998 Adam Levine has done extensive research into the historical topography of Philadelphia, mostly as a consultant to the Philadelphia Water Department. As part of this work, he manages the PWD Historical Collection, and maintains an extensive website of watershed and water supply material at www.phillyh2o.org. He has lectured widely on this research, and is currently working on a book documenting Philadelphia's landscape history. He is also an award-winning garden writer, who has authored or co-authored six books and numerous magazine articles, and is the editor of GROW, the magazine of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

Engineers:

This seminar does qualify for 1.0 Professional Development Hour (PDH). A Certificate of Attendance will be available on site for AWRA-PMAS members only. The meeting price for non-members who wish to receive a Certificate of Attendance for the PDH is $10.00 ($3.00 for meeting + $7.00 for certificate). 

Please note: all lunch orders will close by noon on the day before the presentation. In addition, all lunch orders will need to be paid for online by this time. We are unable to refund the cost of lunch or meeting fees because they are paid ahead of time based on number of registrations.

Thank you!