When Benjamin Latrobe’s design for an American city’s first water pump house came to fruition in Philadelphia, artists recorded the event as if it were a classical landscape rather than a novel urban technological feature. John James Barralet’s image of the pump house included the foreground action of a lively two-seater gig and a covered wagon. It was designed to be sold as a print, but British ceramics manufacturers soon adapted the scene and added it to their production of wares featuring American towns and natural landscape wonders.