Mill Creek | |
|---|---|
 Rudolph Blankenburg School in Mill Creek, June 2010 | |
  Mill Creek | |
| Coordinates:39°57′58″N75°12′58″W / 39.966°N 75.216°W /39.966; -75.216 | |
| Country |  United States |
| State | Pennsylvania |
| County | Philadelphia |
| City | Philadelphia |
| Area codes | 215, 267, and 445 |
Mill Creek is a neighborhood in theWest Philadelphia section ofPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania, United States. It sits between 44th and 52nd Streets, north of Market Street and south of Girard Avenue. It was named forPhiladelphia's Mill Creek, which was buried during 19th-century sewer system improvements. In 1961, the sewercollapsed, taking homes with it.
During the early 1800s, Mill Creek was used as a water and power supply source by area lumber companies and gristmills. Sometime after the end of theAmerican Civil War, as Philadelphia's population continued to grow, business and civic leader determined that upgrades were needed to the city's sewer system. One of the projects involved diverting a section of Mill Creek through an underground brick-covered sewer culvert, which was then covered over by landfill. This decision ultimately created "a submerged floodplain" that resulted in sewer collapses during the 20th century.[1]
In 1849, theRoman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia purchased farm land in Mills Creek to createCathedral Cemetery, the first Catholic cemetery in Philadelphia[2] to support burials due to the influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany.[3]
The neighborhood was formerly home to the Mill Creek Apartments, apublic housing project that was designed byLouis Kahn during the early 1950s.[4] Its three 17-story highrise project towers were demolished in 2002 and replaced withsuburban-style low-rise houses, a development named Lucien Blackwell Homes after thecongressman.[5]
Mill Creek was the site of the 2000 "Lex Street Massacre," in which four men killed seven others and wounded three in retaliation for damage to a car, Philadelphia's worst killing spree in modern history.
TheRudolph Blankenburg School, theMayer Sulzberger Junior High School, andInstitute of the Pennsylvania Hospital are listed on theNational Register of Historic Places.[6]