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Exhibition Reviews
Liberty Bell Center, Independence National Historical Park, near 6th and Market Sts., Philadelphia, PA 19106.
Permanent exhibition, opened Oct. 9, 2003. Open daily, 9–5, free. 11,000 sq. ft. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, architects; Ueland Junker, McCauley Nicholson, exhibit designers; Independence National Historical Park staff, design consultants.
Venerable Relic: The Story of the Liberty Bell. By David Kimball. (Philadelphia: Eastern National Park & Monument Association, 1989. 79 pp. $6.95, ISBN 0-9159-9243-4.)
Internet: images and brief text <http://www.nps.gov/inde/lbc.html> (Sept. 19, 2004).
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| On a blustery April day in 2004 I walked from my home near Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia to inspect the new Liberty Bell Center, diagonally across from Independence Hall near Sixth and Chestnut streets. The Liberty Bell Center, built in a style that might be called industrial-strength modern (with a smaller matching rest room pavilion across the mall), is almost as long as a football field. It consists of a long, narrow brick and steel structure connected to a glass and steel pavilion next to Independence Hall that houses the Liberty Bell. Along with a visitor center to the north and the National Constitution Center, a much larger building that sprawls from Arch to Race streets, it helps fill Independence Mall. As I approached the corner of Sixth and Chestnut, tourists were trying to determine how to get into the building. They could see the bell through the windows in the pavilion, but it was not obvious how to enter. Also gathered in a kind of bullpen was a larger group of tourists who had visited the bell and were waiting patiently before being allowed to cross Chestnut Street to visit Independence Hall. |
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This historic site, like most others in the nation, has been transformed by 9/11. For two years Chestnut Street in front of Independence Hall was closed to both pedestrian and vehicular traffic, but after protests from local business leaders, it was finally reopened. After the group that I joined was given directions by a park ranger, we walked toward a small building in the middle of the mall, which from 1976 to 2003 housed the Liberty Bell but is now the security checkpoint for the park. As I joined the line, I looked at the new Liberty Bell Center with a new office building as a backdrop and thought that there was no sign of the colonial city that had once existed on this very spot. The security line was not too long, but the metal detectors were set at a more sensitive level than those at most airports; all the fourth grade boys in my group had to remove their sneakers because they triggered the alarm. |
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When I finally cleared security and walked toward the Liberty Bell Center, the first thing I saw was a sign with rather shadowy images of an African American (probably Richard Allen, who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia), John Adams, and George Washington. The caption read: "The President's House in Philadelphia, 1790–1800," and promised "Coming ... EXHIBITS about the house on this site, the early American Presidency and the free African community in Philadelphia and a COMMEMORATION of the enslaved Africans who lived here." The sign reminded me that the Liberty Bell Center had been embroiled in controversy even before it was completed. The controversy started with the publication in the January 2002 issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography of an article by Edward Lawler Jr., an archaeologist and architectural historian, called "The President's House in Philadelphia." The article, based on meticulous research, unraveled the complex history of the house that served from 1790 to 1800 as the presidential mansion when Philadelphia was briefly the capital of the United States. Both George Washington and John Adams lived in the house at Sixth and Market (then 190 High Street), which had been built about 1767 by Mary Masters, widow of William Masters, a slave owner. It had been occupied at various times by Gov. Richard Penn, the British general William Howe, the financier Robert Morris, and Benedict Arnold, before he began his traitorous correspondence with the British. It was one of the most impressive mansions in the city, but it was torn down in the 1830s. Philadelphia has never been much interested in celebrating its brief time as the nation's capital. A portion of the foundation of the house was unearthed in the early 1950s when many nineteenth-century (and a few eighteenth-century) houses were destroyed to make way for Independence Mall. Some wanted to mark the outlines of the house at that time, but nothing came of the effort. |
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