Historic Philadelphia

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Above: St. Mary’s Church was built on
Fourth Street in 1763, the second Roman
Catholic church in the city. The oldest, St.
Joseph’s, dates to 1733, but is now in a midnineteenth
century building. When the
Diocese of Philadelphia was created in
1808, St. Mary’s was declared the
cathedral, and in 1810 it was remodeled.
Ground was broken in 1846 for the present
Cathedral of Ss. Peter and Paul, which was
consecrated in 1890.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
Below: The Walnut Street Theatre opened
on February 2, 1809, and nearly every
great American actor of the last two
centuries has trod its stage. It has endured
vaudeville, Russian films, burlesque, Yiddish
dramas, and Broadway try-outs, and
remains the oldest continuously operated
theater in America, and, some say, in the
English-speaking world.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
do with colonial days, and erecting the present
white tower, which has become the image of
Independence Hall the country venerates but
would astonish the Founding Fathers. Part of
the same outburst of interest in the past was
the founding of the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania in 1824.
The old cracked bell stayed in the lower part
of the tower. John Wilbank, a Philadelphian,
cast a new 4,275-pound bell for the new tower.
There is something about State House bells;
Wilbank’s first bell had a disagreeable tone. He
recast it, with a new weight of forty-six
hundred pounds, and the new bell cracked
when tested. His third try worked, and tolled
the hours regularly until 1876. The city’s deal
with Wilbank allowed him to sell the old
cracked bell with the Liberty inscription for
scrap, but he didn’t think it was worth the
effort, and let it hang.
Charles Wilson Peale still had the State
House full of stuffed birds and whatnot as the
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