Philadelphia, Part 2

After leaving the vicinity of Carpenters' Hall, we continued on slowly toward Independence Hall. Both my girlfriend and I were still feeling a bit sore from walking all over Washington yesterday, so we weren't exactly feeling like sprinting around all the historical sites all over the place. At least everything was spaced a little closer together here in Philly.

Some other buildings and such we saw along the way included the Second Bank of the United States:



The Second Bank had this statue of Robert Morris out front:


I know I'm expressing my ignorance of things I should probably know, but aside from the fact that there's a university named after him, I know nothing at all about who Robert Morris is.

This is part of the Library of the American Philosophical Society, founded by Ben Franklin:


Not sure exactly which buildings there are:


Then we were just across the street from Independence Hall:


Unlike when I was a kid and visited with the family, they now have the access to the building itself pretty well controlled, and funneled through one entrance at the front of the building. But here are a few shots from the back, where you can at least stand around in the park-like setting and look at things:


The statue in front of Independence Hall (or really, behind it, I think...):


And here's the spire of the Hall itself:


And the door on one of the side wings:


Once we walked around the front and got inside, I took a few more snaps of the tower and such from much closer. Perhaps too close:


They had these odd little octagonal outhouses. I doubt they were actually operational, but I thought they looked kind of odd sitting out in the plaza:


And here's a plaque they have in the plaza, talking a little about the history and such. If you click it and go to the larger view in the photostream, it is actually pretty legible:


Like the Washington Monument, Independence Hall requires you to get a free timed ticket to take their tour. We had been keeping an eye on the time, and even if we felt like going through the tour, we would have had to run back to the car and feed more quarters into the meter. And, since it appeared that there were a bunch of people waiting for the current tour, we decided that we were just going to have to pass this time around. So, with about twenty minutes left on the meter, we decided to cut our visit short and head back toward the car. I would have liked to have seen the Liberty Bell again, but I didn't think it was worth risking a parking ticket in Philly...

Here's a last parting glance at Independence Hall through the trees:


We saw a number of interesting things as we made our way back to the car. The Pennsylvania Fire Insurance Company building has a modern office building sort of molded around it:


A lot of the buildings have very ornate doorways and ornamentation on the walls:




Another shot of the Second Bank of the United States:


And here's the 18th Century Garden:


We apparently walked past a few other gardens on the other side of the street, but we completely missed them. Honestly, I didn't even see any gardens, only buildings along the street, but the map says they're supposed to be there. I guess it doesn't matter too much anyway, because my battery died right around the time that I was taking the pictures of the 18th Century Garden. So then it was back to the car, and it's time for us to get our show back on the road...

Philadelphia, Part 1

It didn't take us very long at all to get to Philly. Despite the nasty looking traffic reports on the Weather Channel at the motel, there really wasn't any problem on the road again. Speaking of the motel, we did notice as we were leaving that right on the opposite side of the building from where we were staying, one of the columns holding up the second floor seems to have been hit by someone's car at quite high speed. The two rooms immediately adjacent were cordoned off, but we were both wondering just how safe the place actually was. And that's not even counting the neighborhood where it was located. Oh well, at least we made it out alive and no one broke into the car...

I took a few pictures as we made the short drive through Delaware. Here's the skyline of Wilmington, such as it is:


It seems like most of the area between Wilmington and Philadelphia is composed of a lot of industrial kind of buildings. For some reason, that kind of area sort of fascinates me:


And this time I also managed to get the Welcome sign:


For the most part, the skyline of Philly was on the wrong side of the car for me to get good shots, but I did get a few anyway:

(Oh, and there are more views of the industrial stuff in Delaware and the Philly skyline on my Flickr site, if you care... Just click any of the photos.)

We passed by a few ships on the way in. I'm not sure what this ship was, but I'm guessing from the visible superstructure that it's a warship of some sort:


There were also a big yacht-looking thing, the Spirit of Philadelphia, and a sailing ship moored next to it:






I think the sailing ship was actually a restaurant, but we didn't stop for a closer look.

We found a parking space fairly easily at around 9:30 local time, fed about an hour and a half's worth of quarters into the meter, and headed off to see where all the history happened. We were greeted by this building:




It's the Merchants' Exchange building. According to a little brochure we picked up a bit later, it was built in 1834 by William Strickland. It's the oldest stock exchange building in the U.S.

There were several other historic-looking buildings right in the neighborhood when we got out of the car. These don't appear to be on the map, so I'm not sure exactly what the buildings are:



Just another block or so, we were standing in front of the First Bank of the United States:


We stopped for a few minutes at the Independence Living History Center, which provided us with the map and brochure we used to find our way around. It's one of those working museums, where you can watch the people doing the work of putting together the pottery and cleaning the artifacts found in some of the digs they've done around Philadelphia. The people were quite nice and asked if we had any questions, but we just looked at some of the displays and watched for a few minutes before continuing on our way.

After we left the info center, we walked up Chestnut Street toward Independence Hall. I took a couple of pictures of different buildings along the way. Not sure what this one is:


First National Bank:


The National Library Museum:


I thought the cellar doors along the street were kind of interesting. Not the kind of thing that I've seen anywhere else, really:


One other thing I thought was kind of interesting, which I certainly don't see much down in Texas, is the people walking around the town in colonial outfits. Unfortunately, this lady was walking pretty quickly down the street, probably trying to get somewhere warm, so I didn't see her until she was already past:


I suppose I probably could have yelled something at her and got her to turn around, but I had plenty of other things to snap pictures of, anyway.

This is the New Hall Military Museum, which unfortunately appeared to be locked up when we walked by, or we might have wandered through it for a bit. In the background is Carpenters' Hall:


The Military Museum is a reproduction on the site of a building built by the Carpenters' Company in 1791 for their own use, but which was used by Henry Knox, the first Secretary of War. And the Carpenters' Hall itself was the building used for meetings of the Carpenters' Company. The Company itself was a guild dedicated to improving the skills of its members.

Here's a little closer shot of Carpenters' Hall:


And this is a closer shot of the windows, showing the very ornate architecture:


Here's a view of it from the side:


And the front, or back, perhaps. Anyway, the opposite side as the first shots:


More in the next post...