Mr. Creswell

From the most recent, lengthy post, y'all saw that I went to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. I decided to do a separate post on this since that post was far too long to begin with!

A man hole cover? Kinda boring right? Well sorta. Here's where I give you a nerd alert. I snapped this shot not even thinking that I would do a little investigative work about it. While walking the cell blocks of the penitentiary, I noticed the various man holes in the floors. Just general design stuff right? Probably so but I wanted to find out who Samuel J. Creswell was because I'm nosy. 

Thanks to Google we can find just about anything these days. After searching Mr. Oreswell's name I realized after looking at my photo that the man hole said Creswell, not Oreswell. I searched again and got some of the following links:

Samuel J. Creswell found in The American Architect and Building News, Volume 23.

After seeing that advertisement with that address listed, I Googled the address of Mr. Creswell's Iron Works' business and the address of ESP to determine their proximity to one another and got this:

Pretty darn close I'd say.

After opening just a few more links, I got this nice summary about Mr. Creswell and this forum thread provided a few very cool older pictures (notice the address at the bottom of the picture and the cut-off portion of Creswell Iron Works to the left):

Notice the name Samuel Creswell at the bottom followed by what I believe to say Iron Works:

And here's proof that his man hole covers weren't just in ESP.

Pretty neat things you can uncover when you least expect it.

-Suze