Philadelphia

• 1. Introduction

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  Philadelphia sits on a narrow strip of land between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, and in the summer of 1776, the men gathered there made a decision that would be quoted by freedom movements around the world for the next two and a half centuries. The Declaration of Independence, adopted on the 4th of July 1776, inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House, was described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as "the most potent and consequential words in American history." This was not a neutral city. It was the place William Penn chose in 1682, naming it from the Greek for brotherly love, and it became the crucible in which the United States was first imagined, debated, and built.

  But Philadelphia's story did not end when the capital moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800. The city that gave America its first library, first hospital, first medical school, first zoo, and first business school kept generating firsts long after the founding era. By the 20th century it had developed a distinctive sound in American music, a devoted and notoriously passionate sports culture, and an urban crisis that nearly broke it before a long, uneven recovery began. How a city named for brotherly love became one of the nation's most complex, contradictory, and resilient places is a story worth following all the way through.

• 2. Penn's City of Brotherly Love

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  William Penn received his charter from Charles II of England in 1681, in partial repayment of a debt owed to Penn's family. Rather than simply claim the land, Penn bought it from the local Lenape people, making a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the Fishtown neighborhood. Penn's Quaker background had exposed him to religious persecution, and he designed the colony as a place where anyone could worship freely. That tolerance exceeded what other colonies offered, and it drew immigrants rapidly.

  Penn laid out his new city on a grid between the two rivers, naming east-west streets after local trees, with plans for five public parks at intervals across the grid. He envisioned something more like an English rural town than a dense port city, with houses well separated by gardens and orchards. His own inhabitants ignored this vision almost immediately. They crowded onto the Delaware waterfront, subdivided their lots, and built the bustling trading center Penn had tried to prevent. Before he left Philadelphia for the final time, Penn issued the Charter of 1701, formally establishing it as a city. Within a few decades it had surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London.

  Benjamin Franklin, the city's most celebrated citizen, helped transform Philadelphia's civic life. He founded a fire company, a library, and a hospital, several of which were the first of their kind in the nation. Philosophical societies followed, including the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1812 and the Franklin Institute in 1824. Those societies attracted skilled European immigrants and financed new industries, setting a pattern of intellectual and commercial ambition that would define the city for generations.

• 3. Revolution and Republic

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  In 1774, as resentment toward British policies sharpened across the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, drawing delegates from 12 of the original 13 colonies. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration predominantly from his second-floor apartment on Market Street, within walking distance of Independence Hall. The 56 delegates of the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted it on the 4th of July 1776, and since that day, it has been cited globally by peoples seeking independence and liberty. The celebration of that adoption was formalized as Independence Day in 1938, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.

  The British were not content to let Philadelphia remain a symbol of rebellion. After George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine on the 11th of September 1777, the city lay defenseless. The Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, was taken down along with bells from Christ Church and St. Peter's Church and transported by a heavily guarded wagon train to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floorboards for nine months. British forces occupied Philadelphia from September 1777 to June 1778.

  During the occupation, two battles were fought within the city's limits: the Siege of Fort Mifflin, between September 26 and the 16th of November 1777, and the Battle of Germantown on the 4th of October 1777. The Second Continental Congress, by then meeting elsewhere, adopted the Articles of Confederation on the 15th of November 1777. Independence Hall later served as the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on the 17th of September 1787. That document is now the longest-standing codified national constitution in the world.

  In 1793, yellow fever killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, roughly ten percent of the city's population at the time, in the largest epidemic of the disease in U.S. history. The national capital moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 when the White House and Capitol were completed, and in 1812 the state capital moved from Lancaster to Harrisburg. Philadelphia had served as the nation's capital on five occasions between 1775 and 1790 and for a decade from 1790 to 1800.

• 4. Industrial City and Social Fractures

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  Through the 19th century, Philadelphia became the first major industrial city in the United States, with large-scale road, canal, and railroad construction driving growth. The largest industry was textiles, and major corporations of the era included Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp and Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Immigrants mostly from Ireland and Germany settled the city and surrounding districts, and in 1835 workers in the city won the ten-hour workday in what is considered the first general strike in North America.

  Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine arrived in the 1840s, settling south of South Street and establishing Catholic churches and schools. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in 1844. The city's growing population in surrounding districts led to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended city limits from the 2 square miles of Center City to roughly 134 square miles. The African American population grew from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely driven by the Great Migration from the South.

  In 1816, Philadelphia's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country. In July 1919, Philadelphia was among more than 36 industrial cities to experience racial violence during the Red Summer of post-World War I unrest. Prohibition brought organized crime and corrupt police; in the 1920s, Brigadier General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps was appointed the city's director of public safety in response, though political pressure prevented lasting results.

  The population peaked at more than two million residents in 1950, then declined as manufacturing contracted and affluent residents moved to suburban communities. By the late 1980s the city approached bankruptcy. The most shocking episode of the late 20th century came in 1985 when the Philadelphia Police Department, using a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, bombed the Cobbs Creek neighborhood to execute arrest warrants on members of MOVE, a Black liberation movement. The incident killed 11 people, destroyed 61 homes, and displaced 250 residents, marking one of the only times a U.S. city intentionally bombed its own civilians.

• 5. The Sound of Philly

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  In 1952, a teen dance party program called Bandstand premiered on local Philadelphia television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed American Bandstand in 1957 when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 before moving to Los Angeles. Philadelphia-born singers including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker topped the music charts during this era.

  Philly soul music of the late 1960s and 1970s was a highly produced form of soul that influenced later popular music including disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On the 13th of July 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium served as the American venue for Live Aid. Twenty years later, the Live 8 concert drew about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on the 2nd of July 2005. Notable rock and pop musicians from the city and its suburbs include Hall and Oates, Todd Rundgren, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, the Roots, Meek Mill, and Pink, among others.

  The Philadelphia Orchestra is considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. Opera Philadelphia performs at the Academy of Music, the nation's oldest continually operating opera house. The Curtis Institute of Music ranks as one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education anywhere. The city also hosts the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home to both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philly Pops, which plays orchestral versions of jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues. The Walnut Street Theatre, founded in 1809 and a National Historic Landmark, is described as the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world.

• 6. Sports and the Curse of Billy Penn

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  Philadelphia's first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, was founded in 1860. In 1876, the Athletics joined seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating sports league in the world. The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in American professional sports history. Philadelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to field teams in all four major professional leagues simultaneously.

  Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, the city went 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This drought became known as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of the statue of William Penn, installed in 1894 atop City Hall. During the drought, in 2004, ESPN ranked Philadelphia second on its list of the fifteen most tortured sports cities.

  Philadelphia's fans are among the most discussed in American sports, sometimes praised for their passion and sometimes criticized for their behavior. In 2011, GQ magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the worst professional sports fans in the nation. After the Phillies broke the championship drought in 2008, the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Following the 2024 season, the Eagles won a second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. Philadelphia will also host matches as one of eleven U.S. cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

• 7. A City of Firsts

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  The list of American firsts that Philadelphia can claim is not a footnote but a defining feature of the city. The nation's first library was established in 1731. The first hospital opened in 1751. The first medical school began in 1765. By some accounts, the first university followed in 1779. The nation's first central bank opened in 1781, the first stock exchange in 1790, the first zoo in 1874, and the first business school in 1881. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, remains a global leader in options trading.

  Philadelphia also has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, then called the Fairmount Park Art Association, became the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first such ordinance for any U.S. city. The Mural Arts Program, created in 1984, has funded more than 2,800 murals and educated more than 20,000 young people in underserved neighborhoods.

  The city hosts 67 National Historic Landmarks, more than almost any other U.S. city, including Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Independence National Historical Park received over 5 million visitors in 2016. The Philadelphia metropolitan area, sometimes called the Delaware Valley, carries a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion, ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, and has earned the nickname Cellicon Valley for its central role in developing immunotherapies to treat cancer. Fairmount Park, combined with the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park, covers 2,052 acres and ranks as the world's 55th largest urban park, preserving within the city the same green ambition that William Penn sketched out on paper more than three centuries ago.