Day 19: Philadelphia

Philadelphia, the city of "brotherly love." Hopefully, our children will apply that here. Lately, it seems they are getting on each other's nerves more often.

Today started out awkward, when Sherry realized she left her shoes in the van, which was valet parked. Turns out it is not so easy to retrieve something from a vehicle, but we finally got it after 15 minutes. In the meantime, we ate breakfast in a deli in the hotel (no continental breakfast here, but we can walk everywhere today).

The picture has City Hall in the background. William Penn designed Philadelphia with City Hall in the geographic center of the city, with four square roads leading in and out of the city. He was a very organized fellow--probably related to Sherry.




We passed by the Hard Rock cafe here. We have seen a few of these along the road. The boys wanted to go in, but it was breakfast time, and they were not open.
















We got our orientation in the visitor center, and headed to the Liberty Bell across the street. I was interested that Isaac Norris, Speaker of the Assembly, misspelled the words "province" and "Pennsylvania" in his order to the bell foundry, but the engravers corrected his spelling. Lucky there was an editor around!

The Bell has an inscription from Leviticus 25:10 on it, which says, "...proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants." It also says to consecrate the 50th year, and 1751, when the Bell was ordered, was the 50th year of Pennsylvania's Charter of Privileges.

We moved on to the grounds of Independence Hall. On the grounds are also the American Philosophical Society (founded by Ben Franklin), Congress Hall, and Old City Hall.

We had a timed ticket for the main attraction, so poked around in the others, which did not require a ticket but did have informative rangers in each one--our tax dollars working hard for us, I guess. There was, understandably, a lot of security on site as well.














I grabbed Jeremy's picture here in front of Independence Hall, as Ian and Sherry found a bathroom. Just liked the combination of tree, flag and bell tower. They say the Liberty Bell likely did not ring at the signing in 1776, as the tower was too rotten to handle the heavy bell by that time. So much for my Disney learning experience.

In an open west end of Independence Hall, we saw an exhibition called Great Expectations. This included rare 18th Century printed copies of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and Constitution.

In the upper room of Congress Hall, we saw the original eagle emblem, complete with 15 stars for the 15 colonies. Vermont, Tennessee and Kentucky had joined by this time.

In fact, the flag we saw from Fort Henry had 15 stars and 15 stripes. Later, they realized it was not practical to keep adding stripes for each state, so they went back to 13 stripes.



This is a painting of what Independence Hall might have looked like at the signing.

This seal on the wall of Congress Hall is of Pennsylvania. The traditional Lion/Unicorn seal we saw in Williamsburg was torn down and burned after the Declaration was signed. I guess they weren't thinking about Ebay, then!

We were impressed by the original, glass chandelier in Independence Hall. The chandelier candle holder stems were also glass. You can see a bigger picture at Webshots.

All the furniture in the room, except the facilitator chair, is not original. The British occupied Philadelphia in 1776-7 after defeating the Americans at Germantown and Brandywine. The Americans wintered at Valley Forge, 18 miles away, in makeshift huts, eating leather soup and anything else they could find.

A closeup of the facilitator chair mentioned above. Ben Franklin turned to a delegate after the Constitution was signed, and opined that he had been unsure whether the carving was a rising or a setting sun, but now he had decided it was rising.

Ian liked this statue of Commodore John Barry, U.S.N. He is credited with being the father of the United States Navy.

Barry's contributions were greater than those of John Paul Jones, and his fidelity to the Navy was also greater. He was the first to capture a British war vessel on the high seas; he captured two British ships after being severely wounded in a ferocious sea battle; he quelled three mutinies; he fought on land at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton; he captured over 20 ships including an armed British schooner in the lower Delaware; he authored a Signal Book which established a set of signals used for effective communication between ships; and he fought the last naval battle of the American Revolution aboard the frigate Alliance in 1783. Why don't I remember this guy from my history books?

After the Independence National Park, we went down the road to the 2nd National Bank (shut down by Andrew Jackson, who felt it diluted states' rights). This place houses a revolutionary portrait gallery. We enjoyed the exhibit, having missed the gallery in Washington.

This portrait of James Madison is included in the blog for his tremendous contributions to our Constitution, which really is a work of genius in harnessing the evilness of natural human nature and the "mischief of factions" to create such a strong and powerful democracy (sorry--slipped into AP Gov mode there).






Ian and Jeremy posed in front of Carpenter's Hall. This building housed the First Continental Congress in 1774. In this building, we learned about how the first Congress knew they had more work to do, so they set up the potential for a second Congress (and passed the risk and hard work on to another group of patriots). We also learned about the Mayflower Compact, which was among the first attempts to set up a majoritarian form of government, versus a monarchy.

It was deemed necessary because the English charter for the pilgrims designated that their settlement would be in Virginia, not Massachusetts, and they were worried that the settlers would not feel bound to abide by the English statutes, since they were not in Virginia.



We discovered next to Carpenter's Hall this small military museum, which of course Ian enjoyed. This is the first naval ship to hoist the stars and stripes, the Raleigh.

We went to the Independence Living History center and looked at archeological artifacts. They collected over a million artifacts from a "privy" that was excavated behind the visitor's center. Now that location houses the new "Constitution Center," with two-storey deep underground parking garage. I hope they got everything!

The archeologist there was very informative and we enjoyed hearing about the different places they have dug and upcoming excavations.


In Franklin Court, we discovered a really cool Franklin Museum. This picture illustrates Franklin's meeting with his wife and her reaction, which is very similar to Sherry's initial reaction to Forrest.

Franklin said, "Having no room in my pockets, I walked off with a roll under each arm and eating the other. Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father, when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made--as I certainly did--a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. (Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin, 1788) "

This was a unique furniture piece among Franklin's inventions. It allows four musicians to sit around a stand and have their music in front of them.

This is a picture of an Armonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin. It is essentially nested wine glasses of increasing diameter, turned with a rotor. A person wets their fingers and plays the rim of the glasses, for an incredible sequence of harmonic sounds.

We went to the Christ Church burial ground and looked at the grave of Benjamin Franklin, behind Jeremy, who accidentally dropped his smile for this picture.

On the way back to our hotel, we passed again through City Hall, and I was sorry we had not gotten a chance to spend more time there. The hall designed by William Penn has over 250 sculptures in it, and a grand design.

At any rate, this is William Penn's Prayer for Philadelphia:

"And Thou Philadelphia the virgin settlement of this province named before thou wert born, what care, what service, what travail have there been to bring thee forth and preserve thee from such as would abuse and defile thee. O that thou mayest be kept from the evil that would overwhelm thee, that faithful to the God of thy mercies in the life of righteousness, thou mayest be preserved to the end. My soul prays to God for thee that thou mayest stand in the day of trial, that thye children may be blest of the Lord and thy people saved by His power."