Historic Philadelphia

with the last scene to be “the Infernal Regions
with a view of the mouth of Hell.” Planned
special effects may have had something to do
with the demise of the Pantheon.
A rival circus, Lailson’s, was built at Fifth
and Prune (now Locust), next to the prison,
in April of 1797. Lailson, like Ricketts, presented
large-cast programs such as French
comic opera, “splendid historical national
pantomime,” “grand allegorical pantomimical
ballet,” and “military pantomime ornamented
with military evolutions and fights.” In July
1798, Lailson’s Circus went out of business
when its ninety-foot dome collapsed.
A favorite amusement place of the 1790s
was Gray’s Gardens, near his ferry. There was
an inn on the river, with a greenhouse that
grew its own tropical fruit for the guests.
Visitors could relax in groves, arbors, bowers,
grottoes, and walks, strolling on little bridges
over streams and sitting beside a seventy-foot
waterfall. Refreshments available included tea
and coffee, meats, fish, cheese, bread and butter.
There was music for dancing.
Bath tubs appeared in wealthy homes.
Joseph Carson, a merchant and ship owner,
paid four pounds, fifteen shillings for a “shower
bath” at his house on Water Street just above
Market in 1790, with an overhead tank that had
to be filled, and a hole in the floor to drain into
a container so the water could be reused.
COMMERCE
& CULTURE
As the nineteenth century began,
Philadelphians were feeling the need for a
water supply more reliable than wells, cisterns
and buckets in the creek. The city hired
Benjamin Latrobe to solve the problem. He
suggested building a catchment basin on the
Schuylkill at Chestnut Street, from which
steam powered pumps would send water
3,150 feet through a six-foot diameter brick
tunnel to Centre Square, the site of the
present City Hall, where another pump would
lift water thirty feet up to a sixteen thousand
gallon reservoir. Gravity would flow water
from the reservoir through wooden pipes
under the streets to provide it to citizens.
After the usual opposition and arguments
precipitated by every municipal project since
the Tower of Babel, Latrobe built America’s
first public waterworks, designing a pseudoclassical
pump house on Centre Square,
surrounded by gardens, walkways, trees, and
eventually even fountains and sculpture.
The water was turned on in January 1801.
Within a year, sixty-three houses, four breweries,
and a sugar refinery were using city water, and
thirty-seven hydrants were in use around the city.
But there were complaints that pressure was low.
Latrobe was otherwise occupied, having been
appointed surveyor of public buildings for the
✧
America’s first waterworks began pumping
in 1801 in the Centre Square, the site of the
present City Hall, housed in a pseudoclassical
pump house surrounded by
gardens, walkways, trees, fountains and
sculpture. The site had previously been used
for such civic activities as fairs
and hangings.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, DEPARTMENT
OF RECORDS, CITY ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER III
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