The City's photo archive contains over 2 million photo records that date from the late 1800's. This web site contains a growing collection of those photos. All archive photos may be searched by keyword and date. Archive photos which have been assigned a geographic location are also searchable by proximity to an Address, Intersection, Place Name, or Neighborhood.

The web site is made possible through the generous support of several organizations.

The Athenæum of Philadelphia
The Athenaeum has contributed more than 4,000 scanned images from the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project based on photos from the Historic Commission.

The Cartographic Modeling Lab
The PhillyHistory.org site is hosted with support from the CML, a research lab at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in geographic information.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The PHMC has awarded an Archives and Records Management Grant to the Department of Records to support digital scanning of photos. The $14,223 will be used to support our archives interns in 2007.

Awards

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URISA recognized PhillyHistory.org as an 'Exemplary System in Government' and gave the website a "Distinguished Single Process System" award. URISA has applauded The Department of Records' efforts to make valuable government information available to the public.

The 2007 "Best of Philly" award, announced in the August 2007 edition of Philadelphia Magazine, recognizes PhillyHistory.org as the "Best Local Website" (pg. 145) in Philadelphia. The article states, "History buff or not, traveling back in time is pretty darn cool. Consider PhillyHistory.org your very own flux-capacitor-fueled DeLorean."