| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Independence Hall in American Memory. By Charlene Mires. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. xviii, 350 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8122-3665-3.)

Independence Hall constitutes a revered shrine for Americans, intimately associated as it is with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution—two of the defining documents of our national identity. Americans frequently visit this "time capsule of the eighteenth century" (p. 239), operated by the National Park Service, with both Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell attracting over a million visitors a year. Yet, as Charlene Mires shows, the building and the bell barely registered in the historical memory after the Revolution. Few citizens considered them historical shrines. In fact, the building served as a legislative hall, with the second floor housing Charles Willson Peale's museum during the early nineteenth century. Only some quick thinking in 1818 by the city government, which purchased the structure from Pennsylvania, prevented its possible destruction.

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