Kenneth W. Milano

Circa 1847. Curving from Dyott Street up Aramingo Avenue

Before it was a street, Aramingo Avenue was a canal.  And before that, it was a well-known natural creek called Gunner’s Run, which marked the traditional northern border of Kensington.

Fed by streams that once branched back past the line of Broad Street, Gunner’s Run entered the Delaware River along a southeasterly curve that can still be seen in the line of Dyott Street today. It was named for a Swedish settler, Gunner Rambo. In the 19th Century, its northern banks were dominated by the Dyottsville Glassworks, and its southern banks by Kensington Water Works, two neighborhood landmarks obliterated by time.

In 1847, local businessmen hatched a scheme to widen Gunner’s Run into a canal, between 60 and 100 feet wide, extending back to Lehigh Avenue. Shares were bought for $100 apiece, the authority to charges tolls was granted, and tons of earth and mud were excavated for what would become the Aramingo Canal. Soon found by its builders to be a useless money-pit, the canal languished until 1896, when it was declared a nuisance and paved over.

Sources:
Jackson, Joseph. The Encyclopedia of Philadelphia, 1926