1998 Trip to the United States
Philadelphia
Bud Adams was heard to exclaim "Whatever they are going to find to do in Philadelphia for two days I just don't know." No doubt subscribing to the sentiments of W. C. Fields deathbed remarks "On the whole I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
Well we did find plenty to do and could have done more had we had more time. It was one of the few places we encountered rain, but only for a few hours just as we arrived by Peter Pan bus from New York. Getting overcharged by a taxi driver we engaged to take us from the bus terminal to our hotel didn't give us a too enthusiastic welcome to the "Friendly City" either.
Philadelphia was laid out in 1682, on a grid system. It was envisaged as being a "greene countrie towne" and even today manages to retain a certain quaintness. It certainly was a contrast to New York, with much narrower streets, even in the city centre. Settled by Quakers, Philadelphia prospered and by the 1750's had become the second largest city in the British Empire. The city was the country's capital during the War of Independence, except for nine months when it was occupied by the British during 1777 & 1778. The name Philadelphia is of Greek origin and a loose translation of it means the City of Brotherly Love. It is, in fact, one of the most ethnically mixed cities in the US, with Italians, Irish, eastern Europeans and Asians living side by side with the majority black residents.
Next morning the sun was shining and we walked to the National Park Information Centre where we gained much useful information and watched an introductory film which was about how the Declaration of Independence came into being. It is a very modern building, probably built for the bi-centenary celebrations. Our very own British Queen visited Philadelphia that year and graciously presented them with a bell for the tower outside the centre. Not a very imaginative gift for a city which has the Liberty Bell. The newer presentation one does not ring and try as we would we could not see it in the bell tower, either from below or across the street.
Philadelphia justly reveres the memory of Benjamin Franklin, who is only rivalled by Edison in the number of inventions he clocked up. He must have had boundless energy. He helped to create the first fire fighting company in America, the first fire insurance company, street lighting and paving and the first hospital. He was politically active of course and heavily involved with the Declaration of Independence.
Born in Boston, he worked as an apprentice printer in his brother's business, but didn't take kindly to the servitude of an apprentice's life. He escaped to Philadelphia where he found work as a printer. Later he became the Post Master. Did you know he was the inventer of bi-focal spectacles? The unravelling of how electricity works is, of course, what most of us learnt of him at school................kite flying in thunder storms...........go on you must remember that bit. He it was who first understood the importance of negative and positive polarities in electricity and for this work was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He also proved that lightning was electricity.
He married Deborah and had two children, a son who died in childhood and a daughter. He also had an illegitimate son (see they were at it in those days too). On several trips to England he pressed the colonist's cause against taxation and tried to obtain the right to charge local taxes to enable Pennsylvania to protect itself. He went to Paris in 1776 to enlist the help of the French before the impending parting of the ways with Great Britain. This he succeeded in and gained cash and weaponry. He later became Ambassador to Paris and spent almost ten years there.
Deborah almost always remained at home and he wrote her some wonderful letters which are housed in the lovely museum about his life which is housed at Franklin Court where he spent his last few years in the home of his daughter and family, being a devoted grandfather. The one invention which impressed me the most personally was his water organ. He had a version of the old bottles or glasses filled with varying amounts of water and run your finger around the rim routine. In his case it was electrically operated. We saw the prototype in the museum, but later in our travels saw another one in a mansion we visited. Pure genius.
Having had nearly our fill of Franklin we moved on to Independence
Hall. The Declaration of Independence was written,
signed and
first publicly read here in 1776. It is very impressive to see the actual
room where the Declaration was signed. It was NOT signed on 4th
July. It naturally was very controversial and took a long time to
get the wording right and the signatories all to sign etc. Some
amendments were made and in all it took several days. The 4th July
was an intermediate day in this process and much later was chosen as
the day of National celebration. The US Constitution also first saw
the light of day here ten years later in 1786.
As I reported in the New York part of this saga the first US Government began there in 1789. The next year it came to Philadelphia, after the Southern Congressmen agreed to support the Treasury proposals in return for locating a permanent capital "somewhere on the banks of the Ptomac river". Many Philadelphians hoped that it would stay the capital and built a new Court House to be used as a Congress Hall, and local bigwig, Robert Morris, made his elegant mansion available for President Washington and his family. When it ceased to be the capital in 1800 Philadelphia never again regained supremacy as the country's principal city.
Our next port of call was the Liberty Bell, poor cracked old thing.
It used to hang in Independence Hall and rang on many occasions of
note. 
There are many stories of
about
how it came to be cracked but
the only thing known for sure is that the last time it rang was on
George Washington's birthday in 1846. Later in the century it's
inscription from Leviticus, advocating liberty "throughout all the
land to all the inhabitants" made it an anti-slavery symbol for the
abolitionists, and it became known as the Liberty Bell. After the
Civil War the silent bell was adopted as a symbol of reconcilliation
and embarked on a national rail tour. It now rests in a concrete and
glass pavillion on Market Street where we visited it. A ranger there
told us that when it was cracked there had been attempts to repair it
to no avail, so a new one was commissioned from the original suppliers
- wait for it - Whitechapel Foundry in London, England. When the new
one arrived this had cracked too so just which one is on show now who
can tell. Sounds a bit like the aforementioned Plymouth Rock story
doesn't it?
We went on one of the typical touristy bus tours of the city, which took us all around and into the magnificent Fairmount Park where we visited one of the large old mansions, Mount Pleasant, rather forlorn and unlived in. It had belonged to some dour Scot, whose name I sadly didn't record. We passed the zoo and the fabulous Philadelphia Museum of Art. The City Hall is an impressive building too. We saw the Edgar Allan Poe House, which is only one of five Philadelphia houses which Poe lived in. There is much in the way of modern sculpture about the place, but nothing too appealing, to me anyway. The first free library in the US is there too.
The next day we went walkabout in the old city streets and very pleasant and tree-lined they are and decidedly quiet after New York. We finished our walk along the Delaware riverside and at Penn's Landing we saw where William Penn stepped ashore in 1682. There is a Seaport Museum there now and a variety of historical ships. A ferry can be taken over the river to Camden, New Jersey. Nearby is a modern tower-like memorial to Christopher Columbus.
Our hotel was close to the bridge which crosses the Delaware to New Jersey.........guess what it's called..........yep, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
Should anyone feel like commissioning another bell to replace the Liberty Bell I can inform you that the Whitechapel Foundry is still in business and would no doubt welcome your enquiry.
Oh and don't forget Princess Grace. Her family, the Kelly's were real VIPs around these parts.