Race Street Pier (Photo courtesy Delaware River Waterfront)
My wife, Amie, and I headed to Philadelphia via Amtrak in March for an art rendezvous and to see sites I’d experienced in a vicarious way through literature, film and television. I also once played Benjamin Franklin on TV (that’s another story).
We didn’t plan for a northeaster, rain and cold.
Those conditions weren’t the fault of the booming, bustling, crane-hoisting city, then swaggering with pride about the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory and other sports-related winning. So despite mostly chilly but bright and clear weather, we managed a good time, anyway.
Amie booked us onto a yacht-turned-Airbnb in Penn’s Landing Marina on the Delaware River, providing a majestic view of the Ben Franklin Bridge. The location proved ideal for inveterate city walkers such as we. Close by was the elegant and inspiring Race Street Pier.
Art Walks
I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the stone-and-brick passages of Elfreth’s Alley and taking in the human-scale 18th-century Federal and Georgian-style townhouses, built by working-class folk, that comprise what is noted as the nation’s oldest residential street in continuous use (since 1702). There’s also a museum house that brings to light the fascinating details of the tiny neighborhood’s origins.
Dinner and drinks are delightful and sophisticated at the Continental Restaurant & Martini Bar. It’s fun, right down to the olive-green banquettes and the halogen lights like olives pierced by toothpicks.
The Barnes Foundation has rooms full of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art. An exhibition that looks at the influence that works by the artist Pierre Auguste Renoir had on his son, film director Jean Renoir,continues through Sept. 3, followed by an exhibition opening Oct. 21 focused on Impressionist Berthe Morisot.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds an encyclopedic collection of 240,000 objects in 200 galleries spanning 2,000 years. It’s home to works including Édouard Manet’s “The Battle of the USS ‘Kearsarge’ and USS ‘Alabama’ ”(1864) and Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1912). Besides that, the 72 steps of the east entrance stairs are the ones that Sylvester Stallone ran up as Rocky Balboa. There’s a selfie-ready statue for you to pose with.
Frieda offers coffee, breakfast and lunch, but this open, airy reclaimed space is also designed to bring people of all kinds together. There’s a roster of activities from mah-jongg to bridge, drawing sessions and book clubs, and you can even practice your Yiddish.
A Date With History
I went to the rooms where it happened: the signings of the Declaration of Independence and also the U.S. Constitution, at Independence Hall (built in 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House), administered by the National Park Service. Even though not much of what’s left is original, standing in that place where they signed the nation’s birth certificates is, well, awesome. Tours are led by rangers. There’s no admission charge, but timed entry tickets are required March through December.
The Park Service also runs the Benjamin Franklin Museum, which is designed as though you are wandering around the chambers of Franklin’s head. You’ll learn that he was a big player: making music with the violin, cello, harp and guitar, and studying theory, history and harmony. He invented the glass armonica, which is a cross between singing glasses and a barrel organ. He also invented water gliding, using a kite, natch. The courtyard is a steel “ghost structure” design that shows the outlines of Franklin’s Philadelphia house. Beginning in 1763, he directed the construction of the house, mostly through correspondence. He lived there for the final six years of his life (he died in 1790). The house was demolished in 1812 for rental property.
You’ll find a colossal statue crafted by Richmond native Moses Jacob Ezekiel in front of the National Museum of American Jewish History. The statue, honoring “Religious Liberty,” was commissioned by B’nai B’rith for the United States Centennial, and dedicated in a park on Thanksgiving Day, 1876. She now stands at this site, a warrior goddess, defending the right of anyone to worship, or not, as they please.
Also nearby is the Liberty Bell Center. A series of explanatory texts tell the story of how the Liberty Bell came to exist (the name given to it in the 1830s by abolitionists), and the mystery of its famous imperfection.
There’s also a reconstruction of the President’s House, where the first U.S. presidents, George Washington and John Adams, resided. Washington came with his personal slaves, and in videos and interpretive signage, the weird and brutal pairing of bondage and freedom is displayed.
