Boating into history

The Schuykill River may not be particularly scenic, but I had an enjoyable boat tour on it yesterday that started off from right near where I live. The Schuykill River Development Corporation has been working hard to create trails along the river and get people out on boat rides. For at least the past 100 years, the river's banks were inaccessible because factories blocked access. Today, though, this non-profit is buying up land to return to public use. Much of the trip south on the river was past wooded banks with the factories just behind, some awaiting conversion into condos.

The boat trip ended at Bartram's Garden, the estate of early American botanist John Bartram. He planted the nation's first botanic garden. He and his son, William Bartram, traveled around the country collecting and cataloging plants (William's book on his travels apparently inspired generations of naturalists and romantics, from Thoreau to John Muir). The elder Bartram built the house on this site himself; apparently he was a stonemason in addition to being a farmer and a botanist. The house is kind of quirky, with oddly-shaped staircases and rooms, cabinets built into corners, and the kitchen just off the front entrance (at this time, the kitchen was generally in a separate structure because of the fire hazard).


The gardens themselves are small, with just a couple of plots still being cultivated today. It would ordinarily be a very peaceful spot, but a wedding at the adjoining picnic pavilion was blasting rap music--hardly the right backdrop for this setting. It's hard to soak in the history of a place when the 21st century is drowning out the birdsongs. Check out a few more pics on my Flickr stream.

Remembering 9/11

I was surprised to go online this morning and realize that I'd forgotten that today was 9/11. In past years, I've anticipated the approach of the anniversary of the attacks with nervousness--I was always scared to be in downtown DC, worried that Something would happen. This year, living in a new city, I had to make myself stop and remember what happened that day.

It made me realize that, for all of the instances I'm always searching out to explain the relevance of history, this day is an achingly clear example of a case where remembering the past matters. I watched an interview this morning with twin girls born on 9/11/01, and the reporter asked if they knew what happened the day they were born. One of the girls sighed in exasperation and said, "Yes, some planes flew into buildings." Is this all that the next generation will remember of this day? How, then, will they make sense of what has happened since?

Admittedly, Pearl Harbor can never have the resonance for me that it did for my grandparents. But the difference with 9/11 is that rather than having to transfer collective memories to archives after the fact, reactions in the moment were preserved through online archives. It's an expansive multimedia repository--the official one for the Smithsonian, in fact--that historians long into the future will use to tell the story of that day. And, hopefully, it's a story we'll each retell every year, reminding us of the way history carries on into the present.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...of the DC metro

Right before I moved up to Philly, the DC metro seemed like the last transit system I'd want to keep using, as a series of small fires closed down stations two days in a row. For that matter, I had come to dread my commute to and from work in DC, because at least once a week there would be some sort of mess. But then...I came to Philadelphia.

Philadelphia's public transit system, SEPTA, is the fifth largest in the country, but it's woefully inadequate and unreliable. There are blogs devoted to SEPTA's awfulness--riders can relate bad experiences at SEPTA Watch or print out signs from SeptaMadeBetter to post at transit stops because there are barely any official ones. It seems that the main problem is lack of funding, but I also get the sense that it's just poorly run. And don't get me started on PATCO, which I take to get out to New Jersey occasionally.

Granted, the bus I need to get to campus comes often enough, but then I have the joy of paying for my ten minute ride with a $1.30 token. Seriously, your choices are a monthly pass, paying $2 in exact change, or tokens. Finding a place to buy said tokens, then having to pay in cash and getting your change in dimes, is also lots of fun.

Oh, DC metro, how I miss you!

Ben Franklin was here

Well...it's not the most high-minded connection to history, but it's pretty funny that the National Park Service marked where Ben Franklin went to the bathroom. Privy pits are actually quite useful to archaeologists, because people threw away all sorts of trash into them--often pipes, broken pottery, or cooking leftovers. This privy is located right behind Franklin's grandson's print shop on Market Street in Old City. Behind the shop is a courtyard with two metal frames outlining where Franklin's house and shop would have been. How did archaeologists know this was the privy? Usually, by slight gradations in soil color that are revealed as they dig--and by all of the trash.

The remains of a 3-year dig at the site of the near-by National Constitution Center are being sorted around the corner from here at the Independence Living History Center. The large block where the museum is now located was once a busy neighborhood with a mix of socioeconomic classes and even races. The pottery that's being pieced together at the Center is indicative of this--some tables are full of plain, chunky bowls, while others have delicate blue and white (I assume delftware) tea cups.

My visit to Old City also included a stop at the Arch Street Meeting House, a walk through Elfreth's Alley and talks with some reenactors and storytellers. There's a surprisingly large area of 18th-century buildings that are still around, some of which are now private homes or offices. I also managed to make a stop for lunch at a Philly cheesesteak place called Campo's Deli (check out their website, there is actually a video of the making of their sandwiches). I got an enormous vegetarian wrap then headed toward home--all of this, without getting lost!

Exploring Center City

Today I decided to explore the city a bit by walking east through Center City (I live at the west edge of the neighborhood). As an end point for my walk, I planned to go to the Curtis Center to see a mosaic recreation of a Maxfield Parrish design that I'd been wanting to see for years. Parrish, trained here in Philadelphia in the early twentieth century, has been one of my favorite artists for years. But more about Parrish later.

I began my walk in Rittenhouse Square, which was designated as a park in William Penn's plan for the city in 1682. The square was full of people and dogs, as were all of the cafes surrounding it. I crossed the city on Sansom and Walnut streets, which run parallel to each other, to try to get a sense of things. At first, I was passing fancy boutiques and cafes, but as I got closer to Broad Street, it became a little run down with a smattering of cool places starting to open.

The neighborhood went through two quick shifts before I got to the Curtis Center--first through the glbt neighborhood (which I really only realized because the street signs had a rainbow border on the bottom), and then through the campus of a medical school. When I reached the Curtis Center, I was surprised to find that it was an office building. I had some trouble finding even a sign for the mosaic, but finally I saw an arrow pointing towards the "Tiffany mosaic." I hadn't realized that this had been a collaboration between Parrish and Louis Comfort Tiffany.Titled "Dream Garden," Parrish and Tiffany's work is a dreamy landscape spanning nearly 50 feet in one of Center's lobbies. All of the usual elements of Parrish's landscapes are here--grand, orange and mauve mountains, a vivid blue sky, spindly trees, and overflowing flowers (painted from those in his own garden). Tiffany used different textures of glass for the flowers, as you can see in this photo (click on it to zoom in).I realized as I left the building that I was right across from Independence Hall, so I'd walked most of the way across the city in not much time. I took a different route back so that I could get water ice on the way home (I'd looked up the location online, I can't help the ice cream obsession). There were blocks that were charming, and others so surrounded in tall buildings and dinginess that I felt as if I were in New York City. At one corner, I passed a mural called Philadelphia Muses--I discovered the title through the Mural Arts Program's online database, which lets you search the city's many murals by location.This is a city where the mood seems to change every few blocks, some streets are as narrow as sidewalks, and early 19th century buildings abound. Nothing like DC--which means I have a lot more to learn and explore.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, in person and online

After three days in Philadelphia, I was already eager to get to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I hadn't been there for at least 15 years, so I didn't remember much of anything about it. I discovered a bus that runs up there from right near my place. When I got there, I was distracted at first by all of the people imitating Rocky on the museum steps (there's even a recent book chronicling the people who do this). But then I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the building.

My pre-visit browse of the museum website didn't show any images of the building, which seems incredible after being confronted with the sheer mass and lines of the place. It's a fabulous setting for art, with classical architecture and high ceilings. The website, sans images, explains that the building "is considered one of the crowning achievements of the 'city beautiful' movement in architecture in the early part of the twentieth century." The way it perches at the end of a long avenue with a view down to City Hall and the downtown is breathtaking (I forgot my camera, but grabbed this pic from Britannica.com).

The place seems huge, but I was able to wander through 3 of the 4 major installations in 2 hours to get a sense of what I wanted to come back to see. The strength of the museum's collection is clearly the full-room installations from around the world, including a medieval cloister, a Japanese tea house, and British drawing rooms. The more traditional collections, though, I found a bit lacking. The early American painting collection was just okay, with the exception of a room of Eakins paintings (which aren't really my thing), and the European paintings in the 16th-19th century wing weren't overly impressive. I'm hoping that the one wing I missed--the 20th century European and American wing--has some show-stoppers.

Criticisms aside, I feel like I have a lot left to explore, both in person and online. The website has lets you see what is on display in each gallery, and has tours available as podcasts to download, so you don't have to pay for the audio guide. As you explore online, you can listen to an audio stop when you get to an object's web page, so you can tour from home, too. You can also add your own tags to any object in the collection online, which in the web 2.0 world is called "social tagging" or "folksonomy." It's a big step for a museum to let visitors classify things instead of curators, so I'll be curious to see how it plays out (the government is even funding a big experiment in this area called Steve).

After a weekend of moving and unpacking, I've gotten most of my stuff in order in the new apartment. Fortunately, I had diagrammed how the furniture would fit in my bedroom, because it's a very small space. All of the furniture is packed in there--particularly my bed, which is wedged between the desk and the chest of drawers. As you can tell from the pic, it actually turned out looking quite nice (although I haven't hung the artwork yet).



And yes, that's a fan in the left corner--the apartment doesn't have central AC. That's not really surprising, considering it's in a building constructed in 1856. That's fairly old by DC standards, but Philadelphia had already been around for over 150 years. While it was once America's largest city--and the second largest in the British empire after London--New York had already surpassed it by the 1850's. So, what was happening in Philadelphia at that time? Apparently, it remained the industrial center of the country with a focus on textiles.

The drive into the city from the south is still surrounded by factories and refineries, but in my new neighborhood, it's mostly boutiques and restaurants with the occasional high rise apartment building. Being an older city, the streets are very narrow in places--it kind of reminds me of Boston. I've been able to do all of my errands so far within a few blocks' walk from here, but I need to try to figure out the public transportation soon!