THE ERA of GOOD FEELINGS? 

July 4, 1812

July 4, 1819

Over a period of a decade, artist John Lewis Krimmel painted a number of scenes that chronicled the changing composition of Philadelphia's Independence Day celebrants.

By 1819, the year in which Krimmel exhibited Fourth of July Celebration in Centre Square, the event had become a largely white working class celebration, in contrast to earlier years when blacks and whites from all social classes gathered in the square facing Independence Hall. The 1819 painting depicts a festive crowd of white soldiers, merchants and citizens, assembled at tables and under tents, while a lone black boy runs away.

An earlier version of the celebration, first shown by Krimmel at the 1812 annual exhibit of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, was the first example of fine art to take the Fourth of July celebration as its subject. Originally entitled "View of Centre Square on the Fourth of July," the painting symbolized the growing stratification of Philadelphia society by showing well-defined clusters of people: wealthy men and women in classical poses; country folk who gawk at a nude statue; a Quaker family; and an assortment of customers buying fruit from an old woman at a table. Although a well-dressed group of blacks is included, in actuality few of them dared join the Independence Day crowd after 1805, when they were driven away by a white mob.

A contemporary reviewer praised both the "familiar and pleasing...representation" and Krimmel as "no common observer of the tragi-comical events of life that are daily and hourly passing before us."3

In 1813 black sailor, entrepreneur and activist Paul Cuffe wrote, "It is a well known fact, that black people, upon certain days of publick jubilee, dare not be seen after twelve o'clock in the day, upon the field to enjoy the times; for no sooner do the fumes of that potent devil, Liquor mount into the brain, than the poor black is assailed like the destroying Hyena or the avaricious Wolf! I allude particularly to the FOURTH OF JULY! -- Is it not wonderful, that the day set apart of the festival of Liberty, should be abused by the advocates of Freedom, in endeavouring to sully what they profess to adore."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h467.html

http://bigthink.com/Picture-This/picturing-the-fourth-of-july

As Philadelphia grew in size in the late eighteenth century, it became clear that there was an increasing need for a supply of clean water. This demand was intensified by the Yellow Fever epidemics in 1793 and 1798. Benjamin H. Latrobe was hired to design a system using the water from the Schuylkill River. A pump was set up at the foot of Chestnut Street to pump water from the Schuylkill to street level, whence it flowed to Centre Square. There, Latrobe designed a building in the neo-classical style which housed a steam engine to pump water up to a holding tank on the upper floor, with the water then distributed throughout the city by gravity via wooden pipes. The Centre Square Waterworks was started in 1800 and opened on January 27, 1801. This waterworks remained in operation for just over a decade, at which time it was replaced by the Fairmount Waterworks. The Centre Square building was used as a distribution tank until it was torn down in 1829.

http://www.philaprintshop.com/centresq.html  Water Nymph and Bittern (1809),

;