Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Tour Destination: Philadelphia



View Philadelphia Center City East SAT sites in a larger map



Our first Save America’s Treasures cluster is located in Philadelphia, and it comprises a pleasant walking tour mainly in the Center City areas south of Market Street and east of Broad Street.  There are more Philadelphia treasures to the north and the west, but we’ll get to them later.

This cluster includes Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood, where you can see the Revolutionary era landmarks that draw thousands of tourists to the city.  As you search for the official Save America’s Treasures projects, you’ll pass some of America’s most iconic treasures, including Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.  Fun as it is to search out the lesser-known treasures that we’ll be highlighting, be sure to include the famous sites on your Philadelphia itinerary as well.

Centrally located on the Northeast corridor, Philadelphia can easily be reached by plane, train, or automobile.  There are plenty of hotels, motels, inns, and B&Bs to accommodate visitors, as well as many highly-rated restaurants.  VisitPhilly.com is the official visitor center for the Greater Philadelphia area and is an ideal site to visit to plan the details of your stay in Philadelphia.

As for this particular cluster of Save America’s Treasures sites, you can easily compose a pleasant walking tour passing all of them in a single afternoon.  But that’s only for the non-adventurous, content to catch a glance and check the site off a list.  The real value of each site can only be discovered by looking deeper.

In some cases, the specific Save America’s Treasures collection items are not currently accessible to the public.  This is particularly the case with collection items stored at archives and libraries.  While the closest you may be able to come to these objects is viewing an image on a website, most of these sites do offer regular exhibits of choice materials from their collections.  We recommend simply enjoying whatever is on display when you visit—be prepared to discover unexpected treasures while touring Philadelphia.

© 2011 Lee Price
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2 comments:

  1. KimJanuary 6, 2012 at 9:08 AM

    Don't forget Girard College, led by the inestimable Director of Historic Resources, Elizabeth Laurent! The roof of Founders Hall was an SAT project in 2005, the largest Pennsylvania grant in the history of the Save America's Treasures program (even bigger than Fallingwater's!). Maybe in Philadelphia Cluster #2...

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  2. Lee PriceJanuary 6, 2012 at 9:22 AM

    Founders Hall at Girard College is indeed an awesome and underappreciated historic treasure! I'm looking forward to covering it. Philadelphia received so many of these SAT projects! I've settled for this cluster approach so we don't get too bogged down in one area for too long---we could spend two months in Philly covering all the SAT sites. So its 14 Philly sites for now--and I'll return for more (and Girard College) in due time.

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