"This didn't look like normal tree"—19th-century plumbing in Philadelphia

As central to human life and civilization as water is, some of the world's most innovative and even audacious built systems have been designed to provide a public water supply for human use and consumption, from landscape design to public water supplies to public sewage systems. The famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon's (hypothesized)irrigation system to Roman aqueducts to the use of hollowed out tree trunks, the human capacity for innovation regarding public water is fascinating to explore.

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Discovered: Philadelphia’s high-tech, totally natural plumbing of 1812

By Steve Hendrix

May 6, 2017

The Washington Post