Thanks to the way founder William Penn laid out the city in 1681, that big compass in the City Hall courtyard hardly seems necessary. Penn stipulated that the city be a “greene country towne” between the Delaware River on the east and the Schuykill on the west. He laid it out as a gridiron, about two miles long, east to west, and a mile wide.
In those days, the City Hall site was a public park in the middle of towne. Construction of the building itself did not begin until 1871 and proceeded at a stately pace. When it finally was completed in 1900, Philadelphia had a City Hall to end all City Halls. Architect John McArthur Jr. accessorized every column, cornice and corner with stone flourishes, until he had created a French-Empire/Victorian “wedding cake” the equivalent 50 stories tall with a 37-foot bronze statue of William Penn on top, one of five-score statues by Alexander Stirling Calder that decorate the building. It remains the largest and certainly most rococo city hall in the U.S.A.
Philadelphia boasts a more famous building, of course, but Independence Hall on Independence Mall is tucked away and makes no immediate impression. It must be sought out and absorbed until it stirs the patriotic blood with the realization that It All Started Here.
City Hall slapped me in the face as soon as I saw it on the cab ride into town, during my first visit ever. I can look out my hotel window now and see William Penn’s coattails, his arm pointing northeast toward the Delaware. That giant compass on the floor far below him indicates that due north is slightly skewed the other way, the pointer aimed toward Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
None of that matters at all. The central part of Philadelphia is a true rectangle, with some streets running “north” and “south” and some “east and west” and virtually all of them crammed with interesting places.
“Everything that you want to see is usually within walking distance of wherever you’re standing,” David Auspitz told me. We were sitting, at the moment, in his Famous 4th Street Delicatessen, one of those family-owned, generations-old institutions sprinkled all over town — each one unique and all of them famous — at least famous to everyone within walking distance.
“This is a city of neighborhoods too,” Auspitz said. “You walk 10 feet in any direction and you have a different group and something else is happening.”
Auspitz, of course, is a Philadelphia booster. His famous chocolate-chip cookies are sold from a prominent stand at the Reading Terminal Market, a food court of immense proportions and a city landmark. I wandered through the market one rainy afternoon and found South Philly Italians selling their cheese steaks and soft pretzels across the aisle from bonneted Pennsylvania Dutch women and bearded Pennsylvania Dutch men peddling baked goods and produce. Reading Terminal Market is a delightfully urban sort of place that cannot be created overnight; it must evolve.
The Famous deli at 4th and Bainbridge stands at a nexus of old rowhouses (on Bainbridge) and a few blocks of fabric dealers (on 4th) in a district called Southwark. If you want to finger a bolt of serge or eat a famous corned beef sandwich that even a 76er might have trouble gripping, Southwark is the place to be. If you’re looking for antiques, walk a few blocks over to Pine Street.
I had heard bad things about Philadelphia, most recently from a friend who used to live here. “I can believe it,” Auspitz admitted. He assumed my friend had taken up residence during a different municipal administration, perhaps at that time when civic boosters could come up with no more enthusiastic a motto than “Philadelphia isn’t as bad as Philadelphians say it is.” The current mayor, Edward Rendell, gets credit for setting things right, for putting those monstrous vacuum cleaners to work on the sidewalks of Center City and developing Penn’s Landing, a so-far-awkward attempt to make the Delaware River waterfront enchanting and entertaining. That eclectic mix includes a maritime museum and a Hooters.
These days, Rendell offers a new slogan. Philadelphia is “The Place That Loves You Back.” According to him, it’s also America’s Friendliest City, the Best Restaurant City, the Most Honest City and also One of the Nation’s Safest Cities. Call me a bad reporter, but I couldn’t find time to check out the statistics and surveys that surely would confirm all those claims. I was too busy walking around. I got a few smiles, but no hugs. I never went hungry. I wasn’t mugged. So maybe he’s right.
Friends get tired of hearing me go on and on about cities as vacation destinations. Most of them work in a city and they have to fight it every day. They want to duck back to the suburbs and take their holidays in the mountains or at the shore. I understand.
And yet Philadelphia — the nation’s fifth largest city (1990 pop: 1,585,577) — is as good a place as any to restate my case.
A good city encourages walking. Large numbers of Philadelphians told me theirs is a “walking city,” and that does not necessarily mean short distances. It means there are streets so interesting that you forget how far you have gone and how long you have abused your feet. After leaving the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen, I went to 9th Street and the Italian Market. I walked north for blocks past stands of fresh fish and snapping crabs, storefronts crammed with sausages, baked goods, cheeses and poultry.
At a produce stand with regiments of colorful peppers and the brightest legumes, an owner yelled at one of his customers, “Yo! Easy on the cucumbers. You buy a dollar’s worth of ’em and soften up 10 bucks worth.” The customer shrugged and handed over his choice.
At Pat’s King of Steaks, 9th and Wharton, someone forgot to stipulate what kind of cheese he wanted on his cheese steak sandwich and whether he desired onions. “Whaddaya Whaddaya?” shouted the guy behind him in line. “Read the sign.”
The sign said you have a choice of cheeses, including Cheez Whiz, which is the traditional topping on that shaved and well-cooked beef. A good city has its peevish citizens and its unique cuisine.
Eventually, the market gave way to rowhouses, those impossibly narrow residences that so many Philadelphians live in. In South Philadelphia, plastic awnings may shade some of the front stoops, and the picture windows may display elaborate dioramas around the holidays. At Easter time, some windows were full of bunnies hiding eggs. The rowhouses in neighborhoods like Society Hill and Center City may be more refined with their polished brass and decorator shutters. But that doesn’t make the houses any wider.
A good city has a strong sense of its own history and displays it suitably. Well, Philadelphia may not be such a good example. Its history is intertwined with that of the entire nation. A city usually is a little more fun if its historic sites aren’t obligatory. Philadelphia’s are obligatory.
On one of my long walks, I wandered through Independence Mall, trying to imagine how it might have felt to be there when the colonials decided to break away from England and when they wrote the Constitution for their new nation. It probably was harder to make the connection back in the days when shops and factories surrounded the historic buildings. They have been removed, and the entire mall is under the supervision of the National Park Service. That makes it easier for the imagination to slip back to 1776 and 1787, but it illustrates a continuing dilemma. Those old shops that cluttered up the historical district were historical, too, in their own way and in their own period. If they had remained, they would have clouded our vision of the most significant role Philadelphia played, but they also would have illustrated the way a city evolves. In some parts of our national parks, the Park Service has reconstructed farms and other buildings to show the way people lived before their farms and other buildings were destroyed to make the park more pristine. But . . . that’s just a city boy talking.
Philadelphia is not in any danger of becoming a “museum city,” although the listing for “museums” in any guidebook will be the longest listing of all. So vacationers should just pretend that the buildings on and around Independence Mall have remained untouched. Perhaps it would help to heed one longtime resident’s reminder about the after-hours aspect of creating a new nation: “Hey, this was a bunch of guys here for a convention. The town could be a pretty wild place back then.”
I chose to climb the higher plane depicted by National Park Service rangers Erin Basile and Tarona Armstrong.
Basile fondly patted the Liberty Bell, now bunkered in a special glass and steel pavilion, safe from the vicissitudes of weather and vandals. “The bell did ring on July 8, 1776, to announce the first reading of the Declaration of Independence,” Basile told a throng of children one afternoon. She explained that the bell gradually became beloved throughout the land. One group in Boston adopted it as its symbol in the 1830s and was the first to call it the Liberty Bell.
“The reason they prized the bell was this inscription around the top,” Basile explained. “It says, `Proclaim liberty throughout all the land onto all the inhabitants thereof.’ That means freedom and liberty is for everybody, not just one person. These people from Boston were known as Friends of Freedom. They were Abolitionists. Their cause was freedom for the slaves. They published a poem about it and pamphlets, and the Liberty Bell was the name that stuck.
“It was growing into a national symbol. So when it did fatally crack in 1846, they decided to keep the bell. They didn’t take it down from the tower and melt it and make it into something else.” She said the bell developed a hairline fracture sometime between 1817 and 1846. The famous crack isn’t a crack at all but a failed attempt to repair the fracture. “They didn’t know how it happened; they think it just wore out,” she said.
“Yeah,” Basile added, “it’s cracked, it’s broken and it doesn’t ring any more, but, I don’t know, I like to think that it’s still great. I like to think it rings louder than it did then, because now we hear it all over the world, not just in Philadelphia.”
Armstrong led a group of high school students through Independence Hall and into the stark, gray chamber where the Constitution was signed. George Washington presided that day from an elevated podium, seated on a chair — the very same chair at which Armstrong pointed. A symbol depicting a half sun decorated the chair’s back, and Armstrong related the story of how Benjamin Franklin said he had spent most of the constitutional convention wondering if the sun on that chair was rising or setting. When the signing was done, Franklin announced, “I am happy to know that it is a rising sun.”
Armstrong told the students that Franklin meant he had been concerned not about the sun, but what it might portend and whether “our nation would rise or fall.” The kids seemed to get it, and she smiled.
“If Franklin were to come back today, I’m sure he would be very pleased,” she said. The Constitution has lasted all these years with only 27 amendments. And young people were still coming to hear about it, parking their chewing gum and skateboards outside.
At times, it might seem as if Philadelphians are content to leave nobility to figures of the past. Statues remind them of the rich heritage at virtually every turn. William Penn stands tall, a prominent Quaker and the easy answer to those essay questions that ask why people came to America in the first place. (Yes, for freedom of religion. Now hit the books.)
The only ringing speech I heard during my visit came from a man disturbing the peace in delightfully tranquil Rittenhouse Square. He was praising the Bible, and he was roundly ignored by the strollers and readers, by the two men and two women who serenaded sweetly with violins and cello, by the dogs chasing tennis balls and the scores of napping sunbathers.
A good city gets on with its life and appreciates the finer things, such as classical music and sun.
South Broad Street has so many theaters and music venues that it has been proclaimed Avenue of the Arts, complete with handsome iron street lamps and plaques honoring the top performers with local ties. And on and around Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Franklin Institute instructs with hands-on displays and honors Ben with a gigantic indoor statue.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art offers a collection so wide in scope that I hesitate to mention any one of the many masterpieces it holds. It has wonderful examples of just about everyone notable, from Cezanne to Warhol. A statue of Rocky Balboa that stood near the entrance has been moved to a more obscure location. Museum officers deemed the likeness of a fictional Philly prizefighter too unseemly for the steps of a world-class museum. However, Sylvester Stallone’s bronze sneaker-prints remain on the steps, where, in the movie “Rocky,” he waved so triumphantly. Yo! This is Philly. Why banish the Rock?
From the steps where Rocky pranced, one can see the Rodin Museum, a treasure house of the great sculptor’s work, including an original casting of “The Gates of Hell,” which includes the initial rendering of “The Thinker.”
Perhaps The Thinker was wondering whether to order Cheez Whiz or provolone.
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Most of the major airlines serve Philadelphia. Fares can be reasonable (i.e. under $300) if tickets are ordered in time to comply with various restrictions, such as a 21-day advance purchase and staying in town through a Saturday. From Chicago, it’s an overnight trip on Amtrak or a long drive on the interstates. I recommend an overnight stay en route for the road warriors.
GETTING AROUND
Except for the Broad and Market Streets subways, public transportation can be slow. Taxis are expensive ($20 for the 8-mile ride downtown from the airport) but handy for those longer jaunts, say from City Hall to the art museum. But walking is the best bet. Or look for one of the many guided tours, conducted on foot, via trolley or by horse-drawn carriage.
LODGING
This is a big city with big-city hotel prices ($150 a night and up at the better places downtown), but those looking for budget prices and/or less uniformity will find a fair number of hostels, as well as bed-and-breakfasts.
DINING
Actually, some travel magazine surveys do put Philadelphia on or near the top of the list of restaurant cities. Le Bec Fin headed the Conde Nast Traveler survey in 1994. It still serves up a marvelous French menu with impeccable service. (I didn’t have my water glass tipped over until the dessert course. Mr. Dessert asked, “Are you thoroughly soaked?” I told him no, but I had not yet seen the check.) This has to be one of America’s great dining experiences, formal down to the flock on the peach wallpaper. With a week’s notice, I managed a 9 p.m. seating. Try that on a weekend, and you might hear giggles on the other end of the line. A weekend seating at Le Bec Fin usually takes months of planning.
On the other hand, you can walk right up to Pat’s King of Steaks 24 hours a day. Cheesesteaks cost $5 to $5.50. You eat outdoors at plastic tables and enjoy the rude South Philadelphia ambience. Pat’s has the rep, but almost any cheesesteak place in town can be relied upon to slap shaved beef into an Italian roll, add onion and cheese and provide that trademark Philly product. It’s filling.
Those were the two extremes, but Philadelphia has plenty of fine dining in between, including hot pretzels with mustard and food carts on nearly every corner.
ACCESSIBILITY
Rocky could have avoided all those steps and used the elevators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Curb cuts almost everywhere around town are broad and crisp. The National Park Service visitor center at Independence Mall offers a free brochure concerning access to historic sites under its jurisdiction.
INFORMATION
For information about Philadelphia, write the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, 1515 Market St., Suite 2020, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102 (215-636-1666) or 888-90-PHILA. TDD 215-636-3403. Internet: www.libertynet.org/phila-visitor
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Robert Cross’ e-mail address is bobccross@aol.com
