When you are done with this page,
see MILL CREEK CLOSE UP.

Or zoom in on the SCHOOL.

Mill Creek neighborhood
Here is one way to see the Mill Creek neighborhood. A GIS (Geographic Information Systems) map (created with Arcview software) is useful for showing only the characteristics of the neighborhood you want to look at. This makes the map simpler to use.

Instead of showing street names and police stations, this map shows buildings, bumps on the ground, and things underground. GIS even takes features that don't exist anymore and puts them on today's map to make a new map that tells a story, like this map does. (See link at left bottom for more GIS maps with different stories.)

Brown dashed lines represent the existing street plan for Philadelphia. Philadelphia suburbs were designed on paper as a grid of streets with a few main artery streets running out like wheel spokes from the hub of downtown.

Black lines represent building footprints within the official Mill Creek neighborhood borders. There are many small narrow lots - these are for three-story rowhouses with little or no yards. There is little open space unless you count the vacant lots as open space.

The wavy lines of different shades of green represent the elevation, or topography, of the ground. The intervals between lines represent a change in elevation of one foot. Where lines are closer, the terrain is steeper. Where the lines are darker, the elevation is lower. A valley bottom made of closely spaced, dark green lines runs from the bottom or south section of the map up through the Mill Creek neighborhood . Because the topography database happens to think in meters and not feet, the map key shows elevation in meters above sea level. The lowest contours in Mill Creek are about 10.2 meters, or 72 feet, above sea level. In general, Philadelphia is low elevation because it is rather flat and near the ocean.

GIS also shows you what is underground. The sewer pipe (the red lines) is about 10 to 20 feet underground, and follows the gulch so that sewage flows north to south or up to down on the map. This sewer pipe is large - if you cared to, you could stand upright inside it and wave your arms freely (see photo at left). However, during a storm you would get swept away to the sewage treatment plant before you even had a chance to get grossed out by the stuff in the pipe.

The blue wavy line is where Mill Creek once flowed. Mill Creek is no longer there in its original form. The sewer pipe was laid in the creek, and then dirt was pushed into the valley bottom to cover the pipe. In some places, the new surface of the ground is 50 feet above the old surface. A topography map of the old neighborhood before the sewer was built would show a much deeper valley. After the sewer was built and the streets and houses placed on top, Mill Creek had nowhere to go but in the sewer pipe. During storms it tries to wash away the fill dirt below the streets and above the sewer in an attempt to build a new creekbed for itself.

Yellow patches represent vacant land. Some vacant lots are the size of a single rowhouse. Other lots take up whole blocks. Most vacant lots used to have houses on them. The house foundations cracked or rotted because they were on unstable soil flooded by the homeless Mill Creek and rainwater. Nobody wanted to rebuild anything on these lots because they knew that they too wet, although over several decades occasionally people forgot and built on them anyway. Many of the vacant lots sit on top of the old creekbed, where the ground is the wettest. To see some vacant plots, look for the link at left.

The purple dot is Sulzberger Middle School and the pink dot is the location of the proposed outdoor classroom. These dots are in the valley bottom, and the old Mill Creek and the sewer line run right between (and under) them. Click on SCHOOL to get zoom in on the dots. Or, if you want to study the whole neighborhood in more detail before you zoom in, click on MILL CREEK CLOSE UP.

Key:

Brown dashed lines streets

Black lines building footprints

Green wavy lines contour lines (1 foot)

Red lines sewer line

Blue wavy lines Mill Creek

Yellow patches vacant land

Purple dot Sulzberger Middle School

Pink dot possible classroom location

Here are some pictures
of the sewer
during construction
and during a cave-in.
Notice that people are small
compared to the sewer.

OUTSIDE LINKS TO WPLP:

If you want to see pictures
of vacant lots in Mill Creek,
go to this PICTURE GALLERY.

If you want to see
what else GIS can show
about Mill Creek,
go to this GIS GALLERY.