Exploring Fort Mifflin and Mud Island with Hidden City Festival

With only two weeks left, I HIGHLY recommend heading down to Fort Mifflin and Mud Island this weekend and checking out one of the nine site exhibitions now on display for Hidden City Festival!

A restored former Revolutionary War fort, Fort Mifflin was built starting in 1771 on what was then Mud Island, a sword-shaped sliver of marshy ground in the Delaware River. Revolutionary forces substantially completed the fort only to see it bombarded and captured by the British in 1777. The Americans later recaptured, rebuilt and renamed it after Pennsylvania’s first governor, Thomas Mifflin.

Mud Island, sitting just a few miles south of the city, is today flanked by the Philadelphia Airport, oil storage tanks, and treatment plants.

For Hidden City‘s Festival, local artists Ben Neiditz and Zach Webber “have constructed improvised dwellings along the Delaware River at Fort Mifflin. Playing with notions of permanence and impermanence, the artists’ settlement recalls the shantytowns that have dotted the Delaware River wetlands since the 18th century – while also imagining the DIY settlements of the future.”

More photos…