Fill And Fire

The final fill on Umbria Street which closed off Domino Lane from the canal was probably made about 1920 by a small contractor named Davis who lived in Shawmount. He had a contract with some of the mills in Manayunk to remove the cinders that were produced in their boilers. He then hauled them a couple of miles and dumped them at Domino Lane and Umbria to make the fill. It took him several years but after the road was finished, it was not used much because the cinders caught fire and smoldered for a couple of years. The firemen were there almost every day wetting down the fill. When the fire was out more fill had to be added to level off the street.
After that there was not much change until after the depression (probably in the late thirties and the forties) when the city of Philadelphia filled all the surrounding land with ashes and rubbish from a large section of Philadelphia.