We begin here, at the grave of Benjamin Franklin, the great old man of Philadelphia.
No, he didn’t find this city, we’ll see the guy who did later, but he grew up with it. Look at the dates on his grave: 1706 – 1790. Philadelphia was born a few years before Franklin, in 1682, and when he came to this city as a runaway teenager in 1723, Philadelphia was still a frontier town of a couple thousand people. .
When he died in 1790, Philadelphia was a bustling, cosmopolitan market city of 30,000, the capital of the newly independent United States, which Franklin had helped liberate and shape; it was the largest city in the United States and second only to London in the English-speaking world.
But as in any life, it’s the things between the dates that matter.
Ben Franklin was a successful printer by trade. You know him from the aphorisms he wrote for his Almanac: Early to bed, early to rise…, fish and visitors…, three can keep a secret if…, Nothing can be said for sure except death and. .., A penny saved is a…,
What you will see on his grave are pennies. He rolls one for good luck if you want, though you have to wonder what Mr. Penny Saved is a Penny Earned would make of that. A cynical friend of mine once wondered why more people don’t throw hundred dollar bills on his grave, after all, that’s the one with his face on it.
But Ben Franklin didn’t get the hundred-dollar bill by writing witty aphorisms. He was almost universally admired as the greatest American of his day, a statesman and a scientist.
Everyone has heard the story of how he flew a kite in a storm only to be struck by lightning, is that true? Well, she said she did it, and there’s a huge sculpture a couple of blocks north commemorating that fateful kite. On the other hand, with a small wry smile, he also said that the turkey should be the national bird of the United States. You can never take everything he says at face value.
The truth is that he invented the lightning rod and showed that lightning was not a supernatural force, but something that could be controlled and explained by natural laws. Before Franklin, even the educated people’s idea of lightning wasn’t much more advanced than Zeus shooting lightning. What is also true is that one hapless European scientist, copying Franklin’s experiment, discovered exactly what would happen if you held on to a metal rod in a thunderstorm, and he didn’t live to tell about it.
He was a constant handyman and contributed to many other inventions and discoveries. Once, he and John Adams were on a trip to New York and had to share a bed in an inn. Franklin opened the window, but Adams wanted to keep it closed because it was cold outside and he was afraid of catching a cold. Franklin says, “Adams, haven’t you heard of my theory behind diseases?” Adams, a little sulky, says, “why not, I haven’t,” says Franklin, “well, you don’t get colds from being cold, you get colds if you’re around other people who have colds.” You see…” And he went on and on and, as Adams tells the story, Franklin’s monotone voice quickly lulled him into a wonderful sleep.
You’ll see more of Franklin as you walk. He was one of only six people to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and his behind-the-scenes diplomatic work with England and France was just as important. And the ladies of France, we’ll get to the ladies of France.
But there is another lady worth mentioning fisting. That little building across the street is the Free Quaker Meetinghouse, which was founded by Quakers who supported the American Revolution. One of its founding members was Betsy Ross, who, legend has it, sewed the first American flag. We’ll see her house down the street and talk more about Quakers in a bit, but I bring it up now, because a couple of years ago, Betsy Ross and Ben Franklin got married here in Philadelphia.
I’m serious. The wedding was right in front of the Independence Hall, the mayor officiated. The town’s official Ben Franklin impersonator, the man who makes Breakfast with Ben at the visitor center, and his official Betsy Ross impersonator, fell in love over a shared love of history. As the local newspaper put it, in real life it would have been a May-December affair, in 1776 she was 24 and he was 70, though both had recently been widowed.
Finally, across the street to the north. You can hardly miss that blank wall staring back at you. That is the United States Mint, where our money is made. They do tours, but no free samples. I said that when Ben Franklin died, Philadelphia was the capital of the United States, and it was, from 1790 to 1800. Then Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, and all their supporters left and headed for the newly founded Washington. , DC, in tidal marshes. This mint is the last remaining federal institution in Philadelphia from when it was the capital of the United States, it did not go with the rest because it takes skilled labor and engineering to operate a mint, which Philadelphia had because it was a bustling cosmopolitan city, but Washington didn’t because it was a swamp.
Of course, it can be said that this is not the building that housed the mint in Ben Franklin’s time. Philadelphia has its historical roots, which we’ll look at on today’s tour, but it’s changed a lot since 1776, and we’ll point that out, too. This mint building is downright ugly and unsympathetic, in fact, that’s what the architect was looking for: the style is called brutalism. And at the time this building was built, in 1969, not a little part of Philadelphia was being brutalized, and we’ll see evidence of that.
