Seeing America’s history in Philadelphia  — while you still can

If you love American history, our city is for you. In my youth, I wondered how so much American history could be located in one place. That’s Philadelphia for you. Whether your interest is the American Revolution, the city’s formation under William Penn, or the importance of the native Americans who were populating this region long before European influence was felt.

Philadelphia has a plethora of exhibits and museums of art and of history. If you would prefer something more unique, we’ve got that too. The Mutter Museum, founded during the Civil War in 1863, is a part of Philadelphia College of Physicians and houses more than 37,000 total specimens including the largest North American skeleton in the world at over seven feet five inches. On Tuesday it was announced that the museum will be changing its policies on collecting and displaying human remains to focus completely on exhibits for education while maintaining a sensitivity to all remains displayed combined with a selective acquisition process.

If you love Philadelphia history, you would have loved a trip to the former Philadelphia History Museum. Located in the Atwater Kent Building, the Philadelphia History Museum was a trip back into America’s past for almost 80 years. For myself and the countless other youth who passed through it during the 1990s,  dazzled by the ancient documents, antique paintings, and exhibits and even featured a bench made of timber from the original Independence Hall. It was like being a kid in a candy store.

It had already been 35 years since nearly 28,000 people attended Benjamin Franklin’s funeral in Philadelphia when John Haviland began construction on the first location of the Franklin Institute in the Greek Revival Style at 15 South 7th Street. It would be the first location of one of the first science education and development centers in America.

In 1938, the famous radio man A. Atwater Kent acquired the structure with visions of placing a museum at that location. Until 2010, the building served as the Atwater Kent Museum. Despite plans for a merger with Temple University, the museum closed its doors in 2018.

Today, less than 365 days from a milestone celebration of our nation’s birth, John Haviland’s masterpiece on South 7th Street sits abandoned from tenants and scarred by graffiti. If its former steward had survived just eight more years, the American History Museum would have seen the 250th celebration of our nation. 

It’s just one more piece of Philadelphia history  lost to the ages.

Michael Thomas Leibrandt lives and works in Abington Township, Pennsylvania.