For the last 163 years, the Hall-Woolford Tank Company has supplied the Big Apple with its most enduring skyline icon: the rooftop water tank. Contributor Chris Dougherty takes us into the shop of the Olney manufacturer where the spirit of Workshop of the World is alive and well

The next episode of the rebooted Cosmos television series is bound to ruffle some feathers as it takes on climate change and the carbon-based reasons for it. But the topic, and ways to combat it, are nothing new. Over a hundred years ago, Frank Shuman devised a prototype for solar power in Tacony—then took it to Egypt to put it to work irrigating the Nile

On the west side of South Philly, the 25th Street Elevated rail viaduct clearly defines it the boundaries of the Grays Ferry and Point Breeze neighborhoods. Over a dozen trains, including oil trains like the one that derailed over the Schuylkill River recently, rumble its weathering 86-year-old bones every day. Chris Dougherty goes back a century to find the Elevated’s origins in the heyday of the rail industry—and civic reform

Pragmatic, client-oriented, industrial: the architect Kahn. Wait, huh? Christopher Dougherty explores the work of the other Kahn, Detroit’s Albert Kahn, who designed powerhouse buildings for the Ford and Packard Motor Companies on North Broad Street

As Will Bunch reveals in his Daily News report today, the increasing rail transport of crude oil through the city may be a threat to public safety. In this investigation, Hidden City contributor Christopher Dougherty explores Philadelphia’s dangerous history with oil refining and transport—and contemporary industry changes that are putting increased pressure on local infrastructure

Demolition on St. John the Evangelist begins on Monday. John and Joan Pettit, longtime parishioners of the church, share their experience there, and Chris Dougherty brings us this photo essay of the church before the salvaging began and the wrecking ball came