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Top 10 Sensational Facts about Philadelphia

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, situated at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. The city was founded by William Penn, an English Quaker, to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia is a combination of two Greek words: love (phileo) and brother (adelphos). The founder gave the city such an enduring name as he envisioned a city of religious tolerance where no one would be persecuted.

Philly is one of the oldest municipalities in the United States and played an instrumental role in the American Revolution. Today the city is renowned for its arts, culture, cuisine, and beautiful green open landscape filled with outdoor sculptures and murals.

Below are the top 10 sensational facts about Philadelphia;

1. Philadelphia was the 1st capital of the United States

Philadelphia President’s House – Wikipedia

The city of Philadelphia served as the temporary capital of the United States while the new capital was under construction in the District of Columbia from 1790 to 1800. The state capital was moved to Lancaster in 1799, then Harrisburg in 1812, while the federal government was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol building.

Philadelphia was selected as an interim capital, because the city served as the social, financial, cultural, and geographic center of the young nation which stretched to the eastern seaboard. However, the 1793 Yellow fever endemic raised doubts over the safety of the state and the city was not originally designed for the needs of the new government.

2. The first Republican National Convention was held in Philadelphia

John C. Fremont – Flickr

The 1856 Republican National Convention was a presidential nominating convention that met from June 17 to June 19 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was held to nominate the party’s candidates for president and vice president in the 1856 election. It was the first national nominating convention of the Republican Party, which had been founded two years before.

The convention selected former Senator John C. Frémont of California for president and former Senator William L. Dayton of New Jersey for vice president. The convention also appointed the members of the newly-established Republican National Committee. Unfortunately, the Democratic ticket of James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge won the 1856 election.

3. Philadelphia was a city of medical first

Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, 1959 – Wikipedia

Pennsylvania Hospital was founded on May 11, 1751, by Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond as an institution “for the reception and cure of the sick poor…free of charge. The Hospital is home to America’s first surgical Amphitheatre and its first medical library. The hospital’s main building, dating to 1756, is a National Historic Landmark.

The Perelman School of Medicine was founded in 1765 in Philadelphia. It is the oldest medical school in the United States and is one of the seven Ivy League medical schools.

University of the Sciences in Philadelphia was founded in 1821 and chartered in 1822 as Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (PCP). It is the first pharmacy college in the nation.

Wills Eye Hospital was established in 1832 in Philadelphia. It is the oldest continually operating eye-care facility in the United States. Its ophthalmology residency program is considered one of the most competitive residency programs in the world.

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is one of the largest and oldest children’s hospitals in the world, and the United States’ first hospital dedicated to the healthcare of children. It is located next to the University of Pennsylvania

4. The African American Museum in Philadelphia

The African American Museum in Philadelphia – Flickr

The African American Museum in Philadelphia is the first institution funded and built by a major municipality to preserve, interpret and exhibit the heritage of African Americans.

In 1976 under executive director Charles H. Wesley, the museum opened its door as then known as the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia. The museum was renamed to its current name in 1977.

In 2007, the AAMP received a $3 million grant from the city of Philadelphia for building renovations and improving displays for the museum’s extensive collection. Today the museum houses four galleries and an auditorium, each of which offers exhibitions anchored on one of three dominant themes: The African Diaspora, the Philadelphia Story, and the Contemporary Narrative.

5. Philadelphia is home to the oldest, continually-inhabited residential street in America

Elfreth’s Alley – Flickr

Elfreth’s Alley is a historic street in Philadelphia, dating back to 1703. It is located in the Old City neighborhood between North 2nd Street and North Front Street, in the block between Arch and Quarry Streets. It was named after Jeremiah Elfreth, an 18th-century blacksmith and property owner. The alley is a National Historic Landmark.

The 32 houses on Elfreth’s Alley were built between 1703 and 1836 and preserve’s three centuries of evolution through its old-fashioned flower boxes, shutters, Flemish bond brickwork and other architectural details.

6. Philadelphia is America’s garden capital

Bartram’s Garden -Flickr

The PHS Philadelphia Flower Show is an annual event produced by The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in early March. It is the largest indoor flower show in the world, featuring large scale gardens, which range from elaborate landscaped displays to individual and club entries of a prize horticultural specimen.

Bartram’s Garden is the oldest botanical garden in North America. It is a 50-acre public garden founded by botanist John Bartram in 1728 situated on Lenape territory on the banks of the Tidal Schuylkill River. It is a venue for art, access to the tidal river and wetlands, an outdoor classroom, and a living laboratory. Bartram’s Garden is a National Historic Landmark.

7. The world’s first electronic computer was built at the University of Pennsylvania

ENIAC Penn1 – Wikipedia

The Electronic Numerical Integrator, ENIAC, and Computer was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer made in 1945 and first put to work for practical purposes on December 10, 1945. It was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory, and had a speed on the order of one thousand times faster than that of electromechanical machines.

ENIAC was formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania on February 15, 1946. In July 1946, it was formally accepted by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps. The computer was then transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947, where it was in continuous operation until 1955.

8. The Wanamaker Organ is the largest functioning pipe organ in the world

Wanamaker Organ – Flickr

The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ is located within a spacious 7-story Grand Court at Macy’s Center City. The organ has 28,750 pipes in 464 ranks, six manuals with an array of stops and controls that command the organ, it features eighty-eight ranks of string pipes and is laid out across the space occupied by five floors of the building. It is played twice a day, Monday through Saturday.

The Wanamaker Organ was originally built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. It was designed by renowned organ theorist and architect George Ashdown Audsley.to be the largest organ in the world, an imitation of a full-size orchestra with particularly complete resources of full organ tone including mixtures.

9. Quakers in the Germantown section of Philly were the first to protest against slavery

Germantown Civil War Monument & church – Wikipedia

The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends.

In 1688 Pastorius, the founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and three other men petitioned the Dublin Quaker Meeting and wrote a petition based upon the Bible’s Golden Rule, ” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” urging the meeting to abolish slavery.

The petition was the first American document of its kind that made a plea for equal human rights for everyone. It compelled a higher standard of reasoning about fairness and equality that continued to grow in Pennsylvania and the other colonies with the Declaration of Independence and the abolitionist and suffrage movements, eventually giving rise to Lincoln’s reference to human rights in the Gettysburg Address.

10. The oldest-surviving photograph taken in the United States was taken of Philadelphia’s Central High School

Philadelphia Central High School for Boys, Daguerreotype – Wikipedia

On October 1839, Joseph Saxton took a photograph known as a daguerreotype of Philadelphia Central High School, the nation’s second public high school, located at Walnut and Juniper streets. The photo is thought to be the oldest extant daguerreotype in the United States.

Saxton’s daguerreotype is available for viewing by appointment at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and can also be viewed online in HSP’s Digital Library.