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| Emile Wamsteker for the New York Times |
| Al Capone's cell, Eastern State Penitentiary. |
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| Emile Wamsteker for the New York Times |
| The Liberty Bell is open but is getting a new pavilion. |
N Philadelphia, brick-and-mortar history is not too rare and precious to be lived in. Some of the grander examples, like the nation's first hospital and its first zoo, simply carry on uninterrupted, while the less noted may be luncheonettes or shoe stores, medical offices or condominium apartments. This is the unselfconscious city that an outsider probably sees better than a native.
Lately, though, Philadelphia has been marketing its past, drawing more than 11 million overnight visitors a year, and the National Park Service has undertaken a construction and renovation binge in the historic district. Where tourists used to poke around unleashed, they are plied with new tours and exhibitions.
In the quarter near the Delaware River that was home to Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and George Washington when Philadelphia was the nation's capital, a blocklong red-brick visitor center opened in November, and the National Constitution Center is rising. The patches of the old city making up Independence National Historical Park resemble a theme park under construction as the park service rebuilds its core, Independence Mall, though the sprawling renovation should be mostly finished this summer.
As tourist management intersects with the daily life of the nation's fifth-largest city, where 80,000 people live in the two-square-mile area called Center City, one clash in particular is instructive: the one over Independence Hall, on a thoroughfare paved with Belgian block, within shouting distance of delis and offices.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the park service encircled Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed, with metal bicycle-rack barricades. The block of Chestnut Street in front was reopened to traffic only on this April 1, after hectoring by the city, and Philadelphians who organized to protest the militarized effect. The same contingent is fighting the park service's plan for permanent barriers around the front sidewalk and back garden.
But so far, Independence Hall is an anomaly. Despite the prevailing rule in many historic cities - that is, the more treasured the building, the more likely it is to be torn from its urban fabric - Philadelphia has preserved much of its past without roping it off. And the landscape offers not just the Colonial but also the Gothic Victorian and industrial architecture of a vibrant 19th-century city.
Colonial history is on view in official sites, like the Graff (or Declaration) House, a plain brick row house at Seventh and Market Streets where Thomas Jefferson lived when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and Carpenters' Hall on Fourth between Chestnut and Walnut Streets, a Georgian guild hall where the First Continental Congress met.
But the 18th century is also visible in the surrounding blocks of red-brick row houses and shops of the Society Hill and Old City neighborhoods, and some of the oldest institutions carry on as always. Christ Church, for example, erected in 1744 on Second Street north of Market Street was the church of Franklin and Washington.
But the church, for a time one of the biggest and most ornate buildings in the colonies, still houses an active congregation, and it shares Second Street with the art galleries and trendy furniture stores that moved into 19th-century factory and commercial buildings. Visitors to Christ Church amble in, without screening, tickets or guards.
The Christ Church Burial Ground, at Fifth and Arch Streets, has undergone restoration and has just reopened for the first time in 25 years. But Franklin's grave, a marble slab abutting an iron gate and strewn with pennies, is visible even from outside the fence.
On nearby streets, starting at dusk, visitors can wend through Independence Park with headphones while watching the ambulatory sound-and-light show called the Lights of Liberty Show, with historical images projected on the corresponding sites.
In its redesign of Independence Mall, the park service is building a new pavilion for the Liberty Bell, and it will open the National Constitution Center at the north end of the mall on July 4. The center, by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the architects of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the expansion of the Louvre, will have frequent programs and lectures in addition to exhibitions.
To celebrate the constitution center's opening, this Saturday the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, near City Hall, will open an exhibit of portraits and other images of George Washington. The academy, where Thomas Eakins and Mary Cassatt once studied, is the home of Gilbert Stuart's full-length Washington portrait known as the Lansdowne Portrait.
On June 21 and 22 at Valley Forge, 20 miles west, the park service will offer a re-enactment of Washington's march out of the encampment 225 years ago. The crossing of the Delaware is not re-enacted until December, but on the other shore, in Trenton, the Old Barracks museum, in the Revolutionary Army's quarters, is open as a museum, and battlefield tours are available year-round.
Back in Philadelphia, there are plenty of other views from the last three centuries beyond the cradle-of-liberty district.
One is the massive Eastern State Penitentiary, a Gothic revival fortress on slightly scruffy Fairmount Avenue, shadowed by the skyline. Eastern State was the world's first penitentiary, the goal being redemption through silence and isolation. After Cellblock 1 opened in 1829, Eastern State became known and much copied around the world, turning into a tourist attraction more popular than Independence Hall.
The response was mixed. Tocqueville admired the institution and Dickens hated it, asserting that the isolation "could drive a man mad."
As Eastern State's original mission of penitence was abandoned, it devolved into one more hellish state prison. It housed Willie Sutton and Al Capone, it suffered riots, the most recent in 1961, and in 1971 it was closed and left to colonies of cats and rats.
The prison is still a haunting sight, but, having survived proposals to turn it into a shopping mall, it was reopened 10 years ago as a museum. A self-guided tour leads the visitor through the cellblocks radiating from the center, along the catwalks, past death row and the cell of Al Capone, who provided his own oriental rugs and secretary with glass doors.
Eastern State also displays a wealth of photographs and a fine collection of confiscated shanks.
The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, also gothic in tone, is a showcase of medical history: vivid sketches and paintings, fluid-preserved oddities, frightening surgical instruments. The collection was intended to be instructional, as 19th-century medical students of the Civil War era, when it opened, had only classroom instruction.
The current exhibition, "Only One Man Died: Medical Adventures of the Lewis and Clark Trail," commemorates the bicentennial of the expedition to the West Coast. Before leaving, Meriwether Lewis went to Philadelphia for medical advice, since there would be no doctor on the trip; the group survived frostbite, swarms of insects and the threat of starvation.
And in this city full of museums, some present its most informal histories. These include the African American Museum in Philadelphia at Seventh and Arch Streets, with a collection of folk art and memorabilia, and at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 13th and Locust Streets, one can excavate the lives of the Lithuanians or Puerto Ricans or Chinese, to name a few, who landed here at the library of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies.
Then, too, in Philadelphia, some things are just old. The subway system, dating back to 1906, is one of them. The city still has a few trolley lines, too, used by people going to work.
And in Elfreth's Alley, off Second Street not far from Christ Church, Philadelphia has the nation's oldest continuously occupied residential street.
Not long ago, Independence Hall was part of this everyday landscape. Neighborhood residents trekked through its archways lugging groceries or briefcases, and on weekends pushed strollers in the garden, where tourists took to benches, sucking on water ices, during sightseeing breaks.
Local merchants, residents and workers in the buildings nearby felt so strongly about tearing down the barricades on Chestnut Street in front of the Hall that they staged a march and sang "God Bless America" as the barricades came down.
Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in the towering courthouse across the street from Independence Mall, helped lead the group and recalled a maxim of Franklin, saying, "Those who would give up essential freedoms to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither."
Several city commissions must review the park service plan to close off Independence Hall, with public comment and hearings. But even if the barriers are made permanent, beyond them residents and visitors alike will still have the freedom to wander around some of the nation's most important public buildings - or to take them for granted.
Visitor Information
National Constitution Center, Independence Mall at 525 Arch Street, (866) 917-1787, www.constitutioncenter.org, opens officially July 4, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission, $6, $5 for ages 4 to 12. Tickets for the opening weekend go on sale Thursday. The opening festivities start with a free concert featuring Peter Nero and the Philly Pops and fireworks July 2.
Independence Visitor Center, Sixth and Market Streets, (800) 537-7676, www.independencevisitorcenter.com, is open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, till 7 p.m. June 28 to Labor Day. Paid parking in underground garage. The center is the place for information about all of Independence National Historical Park and other Philadelphia attractions, as well as for the free timed tickets necessary to enter Independence Hall, which is open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and till 7 p.m. starting June 28.
Graff House, at Seventh and Market Streets, is open noon to 2 p.m. daily free, while Carpenters' Hall, on Chestnut Street between Third and Fourth Streets, www.carpentershall.org, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. except on Monday.
The Liberty Bell, on Independence Mall, can be seen 24 hours a day off Market Street. Its new pavilion opens in the fall.
Christ Church, Second Street between Market and Arch Streets, (215) 922-1695, www.christchurchphila.org. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m and after noon on Sunday. The Christ Church Burial Ground, at Fifth and Arch Streets, is open daily.
The Lights of Liberty Show, which begins at the PECO Energy Liberty Center, Sixth and Chestnut Streets, (877) 462-1776, www.lightsofliberty.com, costs $12 to $17.76. The show begins at dusk Tuesday through Saturday from May 27 through Aug. 30; on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in September and October.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad and Cherry Streets, (215) 972-7600, www.pafa.org, is closed Monday. "George Washington: Portraits of a Legend" runs from Saturday to Sept. 7. General admission, $5, $3 for ages 5 to 18.
Valley Forge National Historical Park, Valley Forge, Pa., (610) 783-1099, www.nps.gov/vafo, is open free daily. The march out of the camp will be re-enacted on June 21 and 22.
Eastern State Penitentiary, 2124 Fairmount Avenue, (215) 236-3300, www.easternstate.org, opens at 10 a.m. Wednesday through Sunday, with last entry at 4 p.m. Admission, $9, $4 for ages 7 to 12. Children under 7 not admitted.
Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South 22nd Street, (215) 563-3737, www.collphyphil.org, is open daily. Admission, $8, $5 ages 6 to 18.
African American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch Street, (215) 574-0380, www.aampmuseum.org, is closed Monday. Admission: $6, children under 12, $4.
The library at the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, (215) 732-6200, www.hsp.org, is closed Sunday and Monday. General admission, $6.
