Manayunk grew on the power of the Schuylkill River, and its old mills still follow the water. Manayunk — the name is Lenape for where we go to drink — was developed as a mill town after the Schuylkill Navigation Company completed the canal along the river in 1819, providing waterpower for the textile mills that made this the most densely packed industrial neighborhood in America in the mid-nineteenth century. The canal towpath, where mules once pulled barges loaded with coal and textiles, runs along the river beside Main Street and is now a recreational trail connecting to a network of paths extending to Valley Forge and beyond.
Main Street itself, the commercial corridor that served the mill workers, has been revived as a shopping and restaurant district, its narrow nineteenth-century storefronts filled with boutiques and bars. The mills that once lined the Schuylkill have been converted to loft apartments, their large windows and brick facades giving the neighborhood the aesthetic of an industrial past that still feels present. Look from the bridge over the canal at the row houses climbing the steep hill behind the commercial street; the workers who built those houses walked to the mills below them every morning.