Portal:Philadelphia/Selected picture/November 2008

Mill Creek in 1878.

Photo credit: John C. Browne, Photograph Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia

Mill Creek 1878, photographed by John C. Browne. Dove Lake, Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania was created in 1873 when Samuel Croft dammed Mill Creek to supply water power to his brass rolling mill downstream. The stone jetty shown above (actually the ruins of an abandoned mill) was made famous by the Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins, who posed his nude male students on it for his painting Swimming. Dove Lake is now much smaller, and this section of Mill Creek is now a township park.