Fairmount Water Works

Science Saturday: "Ganshewahanna: The Schuylkill River before the Europeans"
2016-11-19 14:00 - 16:00, 2016-11-26 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Drop in every Saturday between 2-4 pm, and together, we’ll explore different aspects of our environment during fun and interactive sessions in our water lab.
Native Americans are an important part of our Thanksgiving celebrations. Learn about the original residents of Philadelphia and their reliance on local rivers and streams. We will learn about their culture, lifestyle and diet and about the local environment thousands of years before European settlers arrived. You can weave a mat of natural materials like the Lenni Lenape did!

Sunday Cinema: "Free Birds"
2016-11-20 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-11-20 15:00 - 17:00, 2016-11-27 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-11-27 15:00 - 17:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Join us every Sunday afternoon for Sunday Cinema – a free series featuring movies and documentaries that surround a water theme. It’s a great family-friendly event, and we’ll show a different movie every month. (Film selection subject to change.)
“Free Birds”: Two turkeys from opposite sides of the tracks must put aside their differences and team up to travel back in time to change the course of history – and get turkey off the holiday menu for good.

CLOSED - Thanksgiving Holiday
2016-11-24 10:00 - 17:00 | PA

Setting the Thanksgiving Water Table
2016-11-26 10:00 - 16:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Water is part of everything we eat, drink, and use. Your traditional Thanksgiving recipes, like one for pumpkin pie, calls for little to no cups of water, but from the time the pumpkin starts growing in the pumpkin patch to the moment it reaches your dinner table the pie you consumed uses almost 234 gallons of water to make. If a pie uses that much water, to make, then how much water does it take to create the feast that we indulge in on Thanksgiving Day?
Join us at the Fairmount Water Works for our Thanksgiving holiday pop-up activity. All visitors are invited to discover the incredible amounts of water that it takes for our holiday meal staples to reach the Thanksgiving table. Visitors will have the opportunity to create a plate with their own holiday meal favorites and calculate the “water footprint” of their individual feast.

Science Saturday: "Cry(ology) Me a Frozen River: The Science of Ice and Snow"
2016-12-03 14:00 - 16:00, 2016-12-10 14:00 - 16:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Drop in every Saturday between 2-4 pm, and together, we’ll explore different aspects of our environment during fun and interactive sessions in our water lab.
Is it a fact that no two snowflakes are the same? How do they form? How many different forms of ice and snow are there? Head to the Water Works to investigate the properties of ice and snow. Learn about the special shape of snowflakes and about a unique type of ice that forms on our local rivers. Make your own “snow” – just add water!

Sunday Cinema: "Last Call at the Oasis"
2016-12-04 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-12-04 15:00 - 17:00, 2016-12-11 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-12-11 15:00 - 17:00, 2016-12-18 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-12-18 15:00 - 17:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Join us every Sunday afternoon for Sunday Cinema – a free series featuring movies and documentaries that surround a water theme. It’s a great family-friendly event, and we’ll show a different movie every month. (Film selection subject to change.)
“Last Call at the Oasis”: A documentary on the world’s water crisis.

Science Saturday: "Cry(ology) Me a Frozen River: The Science of Ice and Snow"
2016-12-17 14:00 - 16:00 | PA

"Falling Waters: The Legacy of the Schuylkill Navigation" (Reception)
2016-12-29 17:30 - 19:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Falling Waters: The Legacy of the Schuylkill Navigation
A Culture & Conversation Exhibit by Sandy Sorlien
On exhibit in our Media Room and stairwell until December 30, 2016, during regular hours.
Closing Reception: Thursday December 29, 5:30-7 PM, Gallery Talk 6:15

About the Exhibit
No human endeavor has had a greater influence on the Schuylkill River than its 19th century network of dams. Yet residents of Southeastern Pennsylvania today may know little about the Schuylkill Navigation, as most of its infrastructure is gone. There were once 32 dams, 46 miles of slackwater pools, 62 miles of canals, and 120 locks.
Constructed from 1816-1828 to tame the wild river, the privately-owned system extended 108 miles from Fairmount to Port Carbon. Thus began a long period of human dominance of the river for our own purposes: transportation, commerce, power, and recreation. Anthracite coal, other raw materials, and finished goods were carried on barges over this system, literally fueling the Industrial Revolution in the Schuylkill Valley. It brought numerous factory boom towns like Norristown, Conshohocken, and Manayunk. Unfortunately, with this development came heavy pollution of Philadelphia’s drinking water source. Finally in 1947-51, our state and federal government accomplished a massive cleanup, the Schuylkill River Project, dredging coal silt from the river and largely restoring its flow.
Most of the infrastructure of the Schuylkill Navigation was demolished. But there are four remaining navigation dams, two desilting dams, two watered canals, one working lock, and numerous dam abutments, lock ruins, canal traces, and silt impoundment basins. Some remnants are buried or overgrown or blocked by railways. In 2013, photographer Sandy Sorlien began looking for them.
At the 200th anniversary of the Schuylkill Navigation, this exhibition represents the first three years of Sandy’s ongoing quest to photograph all 32 dam sites on her native river.
“Falling Waters” will be on display at the Fairmount Water Works from September 15 – December 31, 2016. (The gallery is occasionally used for private events. Calling ahead is suggested.)
About the Artist
Sandy Sorlien is a photographer, neighborhood planner, and watershed educator. Her photographs are in the collections of numerous institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Michener Museum, and Haverford College. Since 2012 Sandy has been a contractor at the Fairmount Water Works, the education arm of Philadelphia Water. She has developed several upriver dam-related programs, including the Falling Waters tour series and the Schuylkill Dam Series geocaches. She was born and raised in the Schuylkill River watershed and lives in Roxborough near the Manayunk Canal. Sandy rows out of Bachelors Barge Club on Boathouse Row, and watches carefully for herons, kingfishers, and otters – all biological indicators of a healthy river.
About Culture & Conversation
Using art as the platform, Culture & Conversation prompts meaningful, thought-provoking dialogue about our environment.

Science Saturday - "Diatoms: Jewels of the River"
2017-01-07 14:00 - 16:00, 2017-01-28 14:00 - 16:00, 2017-02-04 14:00 - 16:00, 2017-02-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Drop in every Saturday between 2-4 pm, and together, we’ll explore different aspects of our environment during fun and interactive sessions in our water lab.
Art and science meet as you explore the colorful and wondrous microscopic world of water. Discover the complex and intricate beauty of these hidden single-celled algae called diatoms along with their contribution to water quality research.
Diatoms have a glass-like silica cell wall that consists of two halves that elegantly fit together. In the 19th century amateur scientists amused themselves by arranging them in intricate patterns, in the 20th century, famed woman ecologist Ruth Patrick pioneered the study of these small cells to study water pollution.

A Closer Look at Diatoms
2017-01-08 13:00 - 17:00 | PA
Come visit the Fairmount Water Works during our Sunday operating hours for a self-guided version of “Diatoms: Jewels of the River”. Through a lens, view these colorful and wonderfully complex hidden algae…

Science Saturday: "Diatoms: Jewels of the River"
2017-01-14 14:00 - 16:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States

A Closer Look at Diatoms
2017-01-15 13:00 - 17:00, 2017-01-22 13:00 - 17:00, 2017-02-05 13:00 - 17:00, 2017-02-12 13:00 - 17:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States

Science Saturday - "Diatoms: Jewels of the River”
2017-01-21 14:00 - 16:00 | PA

CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC (Private Event)
2017-01-29 13:00 - 17:00 | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
