Philadelphia’s magnificent 30th Street Station, a hefty 1930s edifice dating from the days when travel was a glorious adventure rather than a commute, is, surprisingly, only a little over an hour from New York City’s Penn Station. America is a big place, certainly, but in dozens of previous trips to New York, it had never, absurdly, occurred to me that Philadelphia was so close – a mental block seems to descend when the destination is in a different state of the union. And it should definitely have occurred to me before now that Philadelphia is worth visiting: it is, after all, the place where America was invented.
Standing in the assembly room of Independence Hall, it’s difficult not to become somewhat giddy. In the late 18th century, when this handsome Georgian building was the State House of Pennsylvania, this space hosted a sequence of events which changed – and continue to change – the world. It was here that, in 1775, George Washington was commissioned as commander of the Continental Army revolting against the British. It was here on 4 July 1776, that the Declaration of Independence, whose promise of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ remains the spiritual bedrock of the American enterprise, was adopted. It was here in 1777 that the design of the American flag – the first example of which was stitched by local upholsterer Betsy Ross in a house just up the street – was approved. It was here that the Constitution of the United States was drafted in 1787.
The guides who lead the tours of Independence Hall tell the story with verve and passion, but it’s the young, khaki-clad park ranger who picks up the yarn in the wing known as Congress Hall and who properly nails what makes this place so astonishing. Of all the remarkable things that have happened on these premises, he says, the most amazing happened in this room on 4 March 1797, when John Adams was sworn in as the second President of the United States – when, that is, Adams became the elected successor to a head of state who had departed office of his own accord. ‘Of course,’ says the ranger, ‘that seems pretty normal now. Two hundred years ago, it was unique. And nobody knew what would happen next.’
If this is making the place sound like a monument to jingoism, it shouldn’t. All the historical sites – which include, aside from the aforementioned, the National Constitution Center and the National Liberty Museum – also consider America’s mistakes with exemplary humility. In the Liberty Bell Pavilion, where schoolchildren queue to have their picture taken with the famously cracked icon, a sign reminds that ‘Preservation of the bell, like that of liberty itself, is an ongoing process.’
And if all that is making Philadelphia sound like a historical theme park, it really shouldn’t. If what Philadelphia was is reason to come in the first place, what Philadelphia is now is reason to stay. It’s the most easily explorable of any major American city I’ve visited. The entire downtown, wedged between the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers, can be crossed on foot in under an hour. Unlike many American inner cities, Philadelphia has not outsourced itself to orbiting strip-malls; it’s still a place where people live and work.
The city is not oppressively overdeveloped – as recently as the late 1980s, a gentlemen’s agreement ensured that no building stood taller than the statue of Philadelphia’s founder, William Penn, atop the spectacular late-19th-century City Hall. There are those in Philadelphia who will solemnly inform you that the new skyscrapers dwarfing Penn’s statue are the reason that none of Philadelphia’s much-loved sports teams have won anything since 1983: the Curse of Billy Penn, they call it. The people who believe this seem to be concentrated, funnily enough, in Philadelphia’s excellent, eccentric dive bars: try Bob & Barbara’s, which on Monday nights hosts a Drunken Spelling Bee, or my favourite, Dirty Frank’s, a windowless bunker that features portraits of famous namesakes – Sinatra, Zappa, etc – and where the entertainment includes a weekly ‘rock, paper, scissors’ tournament.
