Taking a Philly Constitutional

Walking is always a pleasure in Philadelphia. But during the Bicentennial Celebration of the Constitution, this city has become a river-to-river series of wonders for the walker. Think of Market Street as the center point of your rambles; it begins at Penn's Landing on the Delaware River and runs West for thirty blocks where it crosses the Schuylkill River at the Amtrak Station. If you arrive on a sunny day, park your luggage in a locker (you'll need four quarters), and get to know us using your feet.

Half-way to the Delaware, you'll run smack into our funky High Victorian City Hall--where Broad Street and Market intersect. On the second and fourth floors of City Hall is the freshest innovation of the Goode Administration--a Municipal Art Gallery where the city's artists strut their stuff in quarterly shows curated by local museum personnel. The grand old building is also a treasure trove of representational sculpture that is really a visual history of the city. Wanna know who John Wanamaker was? Scrutinize his statue on the North side of City Hall. You'll find out he pioneered the modern department store back in the l880's. (Incidentally, the serious student of civic sculpture is in luck: Roslyn F. Brenner has just written a perky, well-illustrated handbook, "Philadelphia's Outdoor Art--A Walking Tour" (Camino Books, P.O. Box 59026, Philadelphia 19102, $7.95.) If you don't think ahead and order it by mail, test your new geographical savvy by visiting the best local bookstore in the city, Robin's, on S.13th between Chestnut and Sansom--turn right (or South) off Market. You'll find congenial people there and more cultural events than a three ring circus has elephants.

After your pitstop at Robin's, you're ready to take your Constitutional. Seven blocks further east, you'll hit Independence Mall. (On the way, look out for the house on the corner of Market and Seventh Street where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration. I call Seventh "Ethnick Alley" because three of Philly's liveliest small ethnic museums are located there. ) But on to the Main Events!

The Main Shebang: As you turn right onto Sixth Street (South), your eye will catch the familiar spire of Independence Hall. Head there to get into a properly patriotic mood, and to get directions from a National Park Service guard where you get your ticket for "Miracle in Philadelphia", the NPS extravaganza in the stately Second Bank of the United States on Fourth and Chestnut behind Independence Hall--a gloss on what went on that hot summer in l787. Next to Independence Hall is Olde City Hall where there is a small but delightful tribute to Magna Carta, King John's 1815 capitulation to the English barons who were sick of being taxed to the teeth for his losing wars. H.Ross Perot, the computer billionaire, dropped $l.5 millions for a King Edward 1297 version of the forerunner of our Constitution. He's lent it to Philly until the end of the celebration in December.

Frankly, I feel about old medieval manuscripts the way President Reagan feels about redwoods--"You've seen one, you've seen them all!" But don't miss the eleven minute movie about Magna Carta and what it's lead to in our own society. It's one of the best things going. And don't miss the roomful of Barons' Banners. They're gorgeous, and as up-to-date looking as the Concorde. Come down from your first set of Constitutional highs by schmoozing in the Visitors Center, a work by Venturi, Rauch, and Scott-Brown, the hottest architectural firm in town. (They just got the new addition to the National Gallery of Art in London!) Some of us local Phillies like their Post-Modern funkiness; then again some of us don't. See what you think. The firm prides itself on being populist--in tune with the people; their critics say they're merely in tune with the trends! Venturi is the professor who became famous by taking his Ivy League students to Las Vegas to learn from their Gofer Baroque style.

Ethnick Alley: For your next ramble, walk North along Independence Mall, alongside the humungous Sci Fi looking pavilion, and towards Franklin Square,which forms the plaza leading onto the great Paul Philippe Cret bridge to Camden (1926) and gracing which is the controversial Isamu Noguchi sculpture memorializing BF's kite experiments with electricity. Like it? Even though I'm a Noguchi nut, it took me years before it exhilarated my eye. Good things take time.

As you cross Market Street walking North on Fifth, look sharp--or you will miss one of Philly's liveliest ethnick outposts, The National Museum of American Jewish History: it's tucked back in a delectable pocket park right behind the Philadelphia National Bank. Like many of this city's newest museums, it's a legacy of the BiCen of the Declaration of Independence in l976. Strictly speaking, its current exhibition is not BiCen related--"A Century of Jewish Journalism in America"--it's touting the first hundred years of the local weekly; "The Jewish Exponent". But Jews have done so superbly here in the years since World War II(when the blight of anti-Semitism has been lifted ) that this show is definitely one you'll want to see and savour in the spirit of how the Constitution allows for growth and achievement for all peoples when its letter and spirit are revered.

Now walk North again to Arch Street (The U.S. Mint will be on your right--with a feisty show of its own,which save for another day). For by turning right and walking to the Afro-American History and Culture Museum, you will set yourself up for the most interesting show in town, "The Sounds of Philly," a funky walkthrough show of Philly's contribution to American music. The range is wide and the stars are dazzling: Paul Robeson and Marion Anderson in classical music, the Heath brothers (Jimmy, Percy, and "Toots") in jazz, gospel troupes, American Bandstand doo wop and all. It's a marvel, when you stop and think about how much Philly's blacks have contributed to our national musical heritage.

Now walk South on Ethnick Alley (Seventh Street), crossing Market once more. (Now it's time to pay your respects to Thomas Jefferson in the house where he signed the D of I.) Now walk through the park behind it, and you'll be at the front door of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, one of my favorite places in all Philly. "Freedom's Doors" is typically inventive Balch--it explores the immigrant ports of entry other than Ellis Island--including Philly and Baltimore in the l9th century and ending with LAX and Miami International Airport.

Across the street from the Balch is the city's own museum--the Atwater Kent (remember those old console radios in our Depression living rooms?). Its current show flaunts its incredibly rich holdings from l680 to l880. The old tools used in repairing sails knocked me out when I first saw them. And I love the old piously patriotic tradition of making furniture with "sacred" trees like the chair constructed of wood from the Treaty Elm under which William Penn dealt fairly with the Indians. The Atwater Kent is one of the most neglected treasures of our city. Don't you go home without using it!

The Antiquarian Avenues: Penn's dream was to create a "Greene Countrie Towne"--and the four squares (Washington, Franklin, Logan, and Rittenhouse--Center Square is now covered with City Hall) were his chief guarantee that green would prevail; even today Fairmount Park is the largest per capita acreage park in the world. He also hedged his bets by naming the East-West streets after trees, sort of semantic horticulture! Thus as you walk South on Seventh, you'll cross Chestnut. Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine, and Lombard until you get to South Street,
the Greenwich Village of Philly. But turn right or West on Locust, and walk to Thirteenth where you will run into, back to back, two of the jewels of historical research in the Delaware Valley--first, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and next door, the Library Company.

For years these two were moribund institutions, drowsing in the dust of their great piles of documentary evidence about our city's and country's origins. But lately both have sprouted green all over the place. So don’t be put off by their formidable looking facades. They're talking ideas--but now they speak in a friendly tongue. The Library Company was the de facto Library of Congress until the government moved to D.C. And HSOP has actually got an 800 number buzzing with BiCen trivia! Try them both.

Now walk briskly West on Locust (this is after all a "constitutional"!) until you come to Broad Street. Ogle the Academy of Music across the street--Napoleon LeBrun's marvelous home for the great Philadelphia Orchestra. Go North (that's City Hall blocking your vision up ahead--if the Free Willy Penn campaign succeeds , there won't be any scaffolding surrounding the statue of our Eponym on top of City Hall. If it doesn't, well, try us again during the Tricentennial!)

Turn left (North) onto Chestnut. At l806.have I got a treat for you. Frank S. Schwarz & Son, one of our leading antiquarians, has assembled the spritziest show of the BiCen--"A Gallery Collects Peales". The Peale family are my favorite bunch in all Philly's history. The patriarch, Charles Willson, named his children Rubens, Raphael and Titian, and the amazing thing is they all turned out to be credible artists! He created his own museum where, unlike P.T. Barnum, he got people into his door with oddities like exhumed mastodons so they would stay and look at the paintings. Well there are works by fifteen different Peales, a handsome catalog, and a map showing thirty five (!) other sources of Peale paintings in the DelVal. Holy Moses! A veritable Pealearama.

By the way, their map is a marvel of cartographical art in its own right, and locals as well as transients are hereby advised it is by far the best freebie of the BiCen. There are many other galleries up and down the "Tree Streets" and they are full of serendipitous surprises, but nobody can hold a candle to the Schwarzes on their BiCen maneuver.

Culture Gulch: The Benjamin Franklin Parkway,which commences in a Northwesterly direction, at JFK and l6th, where the circular Visitors Hospitality Center is located, is our Champs Elysee. The easy way to soak up Philly Culture along the Gulch is to take the Fairmount Trolley at the VHC. But if God had wanted you to take public transportation, he wouldn't have made you with legs. And this, I remind you, is advice for a Philly Constitutional. At the VHC, be sure to pick up the free weeklies like The City Paper and the Welcomat. They'll have the freshest tips about BiCenning about.

But get on those legs and move towards the Art Museum on the Fairmount at the end of the Parkway. I'd urge you to make one slight deviation at the start--to Suburban Station across the street where Joyce Kosloff's luminous mosaic mural takeoff on Ravenna's Galla Placidia is one of the new glories of our civic art. At Logan Circle, the Swann Fountain is by Sandy Calder's father (Willy Penn is by his grandfather--in Philly, the Calders are to sculpture what the Peales are to painting.) Cool off in its sweetly drizzly breezes. Clockwise, that's the Free Library (with an exhibit showing the history of the amending process), the Franklin Institute (with a major show on robotic intelligence), and the Academy of Natural Sciences (the oldest such institution in the New World, with the newest dinosaur exhibition.)

Now walk up the Parkway, exulting in the snapping flags of all the United Nations, resisting the temptation to visit the Rodin museum on your right, because you're going to need time, lots of it, to absorb the PMA BiCen specials--"Twelve Photographers Look at US" and the biggest of this summer's biggies--"Federal Philadelphia, 1785-1825: The Athens of the Western World," more than 250 objects showing how Philly peaked as America's cultural capital in the wake of the founding of the Republic. There's a tearoom as well as a fancy restaurant to unwind in. Sunday Brunch is especially recommended inasmuch as admission is free before 11 a.m. Don't fail to do an anti-Rocky on the steps of the Museum which face City Hall. You don't have to be a Balboa or a boxer to dig the Philly skyline from that vantage point.

The Best for Last: The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) at Broad and Cherry is the first art museum in America (1805). Charles Willson Peale was its prime mover as long with some high-minded Quakers. Frank Furness (among his other achievements--he gave Louis Sullivan his first job as an architect) designed this gorgeous High Vic fantasy in 1876, as part of the Higher Hoopla celebrating our Centennial as a nation. There's a small BiCen show there (dig the Pealeses and the William Rush stuff--he was America's first sculptor). But the real show is the building itself saved from neglect and disimprovements and restored to its pristine Vickitude for the 1976 BiCen. It's one of the great buildings of America and it never fails to lift my spirits. Enjoy!

A Final Bonus: "Passport to the World" is a great notion. "Circle the globe and view selected objects from nations around the world exhibited at Philadelphia area world-class museums." From Algeria to Zimbabwe! And there's a contest with the Grand Prize a Royal Viking Line cruise from L.A. to Fort Lauderdale through the Panama Canal. We the People 200, the much maligned "organizers" of all these walkables, really came up with a winner on this scheme. Get your passport and start walking. The ignorance you lose will be your own, and the joys of discovery here in Philly will last you a lifetime.