Our first free day in Philadelphia was Friday - and it was my third full day off in the month of June, so you bet I was ready to do no work at all! We walked to the mall, took a bus to the train station, and took the train into downtown Philadelphia, where we walked to what everyone calls "the Old City"... revolutionary Philly! The funniest part of the trip in was at the train station, where D bought the newspaper after we realized that J's picture was on the front page from our event yesterday... I was on the cover, too, but he earned a spot above the fold, so there was much hilarity at his expense!
Our goals for the trip to the Old City were simple: see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Other than that, we didn't really have any plans. So we stopped in at the Visitor's Center as soon as we arrived to grab our free tickets for the Independence Hall tour - the tickets are free, but you have to have one to enter the building and they "sell" out quickly. We arrived about 10:30, and our tickets were for 3:30 that afternoon, leaving us hours to explore the historic district before it was time for the tour.
There's a whole "historic district" that makes up the Old City, and most of it is actually part of a National Park (Independence National Park, I think, or something like that). It was a bit funny to be seeing Park Rangers in the middle of a city!
We picked a direction and were off, with no real plans as to what we'd find. We wound up seeing an old Quaker meeting house, one of the first fire stations in America (complete with a Ben Franklin statue), the Betsy Ross house, and Elfreth Alley (apparently the oldest residential street in America).
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| The Quaker meeting house. |
But the real highlights were Christ Church Cemetery, and a few blocks later, the actual Christ Church itself. Benjamin Franklin and five other signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried in the cemetery, including Dr. Rush. It was a fantastic place to visit, and well worth the $2 admission fee - the graveyard was beautiful, surrounded by an old brick wall to keep it separate from the more modern city beyond it.
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| The main pathway in the cemetary. |
There are over 4,400 people buried in this tiny cemetery, but only 1,300 or so markers remain. Most of the markers are made of slate, and the etchings on them are in various stages of legibility due to the passing of time (and acid rain, I was told). The oldest legible stone dates from 1723.
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| Most markers were about as worn as this one, of a husband and wife. Some had little plaques put up to show what the inscription had been before they wore away - the man in charge of the cemetery in the 1840s copied down as many inscriptions as he could before they vanished. |
There were several signers of the Declaration of Independence buried in Christ Church Cemetery, and for the most part people had put little American flags next to their graves to identify them. But at least one of them was buried in an unmarked or unfound grave, and of course the most famous occupant of the graveyard is Benjamin Franklin, who is buried right by the fence (at his request, actually, so people don't actually have to enter the cemetery to see the gravestone!). People throw their pennies onto his slab... I guess they didn't pay too much attention to that whole "a penny saved" thing!
We really enjoyed exploring the cemetery - it was very pretty and peaceful, in an elegant old type of way. Because we liked it so much, we decided to carry on down the street to go to the actual church it belonged to: Christ Church, where a number of the founding fathers had attended services.
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| The bell tower at Christ Church. |
The church was impressive, though fairly plain - such an old brick building. We were all really impressed by how skilled brickworkers back then had been! The grounds around the church were very pretty, with more tombs and slabs in honor of Philadelphia's older citizenry, including a few more signers of the Declaration.
I wound up buying a book about the signers in the church's book shop:
. It's a look at all the different signers of the Declaration of Independence, and what their lives were like leading them up to 1776 and what happened to them afterwards. I read it on the plane back from Harrisburg, and really enjoyed it. I'm going to be using bits and pieces of it with the 8th graders next year, I think, as it's exactly the right tone for them: a survey rather than a huge comprehensive study, full of odd little memorable facts and tidbits that make life then very real, and with just enough humor that they shouldn't be too bored. I know I liked it!
From Christ Church, we decided to work our way back towards Independence Hall. We stopped in at a used bookshop at J's recommendation, and I found a reprinting of the old Primers used in schools through the 1910s, grades 1 through 6. I'm going to keep it on my desk at school for the kids to flip through when they don't have work to do... the level 6 primer contains readings I didn't do until college, so I'd love to see what the kids make of their "below my grade level" books!
We stopped by Elfreth's Alley (and doesn't that sound like something out of Harry Potter?) to see what residential streets of the 1700s looked like. The answer? Narrow!
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| Elfreth Alley, typical house width: nine to sixteen feet. |
By then, it was well past lunch time, so we stopped for a classic Philly cheese steak before continuing on. We passed Locksley Alley, which looked just as old and narrow as Elfreth:
We still had about an hour before our tour of Independence Hall, so we decided to stop by a few of the other buildings in the area. We went through a security check to enter the U.S. Mint, and poked around the Constitution Center but didn't enter the exhibit (we weren't willing to pay $12 to stare at displays for the half-hour we had before our tour!).
Instead, we went back to the Visitor's Center so I could pick up another book:
. I read this on the plane back from Harrisburg, too (what can I say, I devour books and it was almost five hours of flying!). I really enjoyed it, and got through the military history all right, but the best part was really looking at the Battle of Boston and seeing the differences between the British Redcoats and the American Continental Army. I wish it had continued on past 1776 - it stopped right after the Battle of Trenton, and I would have loved to see it take on the Southern Campaign and the Battle of Yorktown. But then, I'm a history nerd!
And as a history nerd, I was of course thrilled when we were able to head into Independence Hall for our tour. We had the loudest ranger ever as our tour guide, but he did a great job telling the story of the building, both as the Pennsylvania government building and as Independence Hall.
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| The room where the Declaration was signed, and later the Constitution. The chair in the center in the back is George Washington's chair, with the "rising sun" of the Constitution! |
It was really, really neat to see firsthand the room where everything took place. Afterwards, we went out into the courtyard behind the building, and reenactors recited most of the Declaration of Independence (they left out the List of Grievances, otherwise it would have been very long!). It was honestly amazing - the first time a reading of a political document has given me chills.
That seemed to be a great culminating point of the day, so from there we bought smoothies to fight the heat of the day (about 85 degrees, with a drop in humidity to only 90%) and went back to the train station for the trip back to the hotel, where I promptly began reading my book about the signers. I'm predictable!
Oh, and we did see the Liberty Bell, too, as it turned out - you could either wait in a really long line to enter the building it's housed in and file past the the bell, or you could sneak around the back to see it through a plexiglass wall. Guess which one we decided made more sense? Yup, we didn't bother to wait in line, and decided we were all good with seeing it through a glass wall. Maybe that's why I was a bit underwhelmed by it - yes, it's a cool bell, but honestly it didn't make that big of an impact on me!
Over dinner, we set our plans for the next day: we'd explore in the morning, and then after lunch we'd pack everything up and drive out to Harrisburg. Where would we explore?
Oh, just a little National Park about two miles down the road from our hotel called Valley Forge...
-Beth
