Philadelphia Museum of Art (Pennsylvania, USA)

Philadelphia Museum of Art

This art museum, originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, has impressive collections containing over 240,000 objects in over 200 galleries spanning 2,000 years. It includes major holdings of European, American and Asian origin, showing the creative achievements of the Western world since the first century BC and those of Asia since the third millennium AD.

The various classes of artwork include sculpture; paintings; prints; drawings; photographs;, arms and armor; and decorative arts.

The author

Standouts include a great Rogier van der Weyden altarpiece, the large The Bathers by Paul Cezanne, a room devoted to Philadelphia’s own realist painter Thomas Eakins, and the notorious mixed-media Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors (most often called The Large Glass), exactly as the Dada master Marcel Duchamp installed it.

Prometheus Strangling the Vulture (Bronze, Jacques Lipchitz, cast 1952-53)

Upstairs are over 80 period rooms, from a Medieval cloister to an Indian temple.  In recent years, the museum has helped to organize shows,  from Paul Cezanne and Edgar Degas to Constantin Brancusi and Barnett Newman.

Jandy in front of a choir screen from the chapel of the chateau of Pagny

The main museum building, on Fairmount, a rocky hill topped by the city’s main reservoir located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (formerly Fairmount Parkway) at Eakins Oval, was completed in 1928.

Entrance Lobby

The museum administers several annexes including the Rodin Museum, also located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building (opened in 2007), which is located across the street just north of the main building.

Check out “Rodin Museum” and “Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building

Botanist Take a Core Sample of a 350 year old Redwood Tree, Redwood National Park, California (2008)

Bright Angel Point, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona (2008)

The main museum building and its annexes, owned by the City of Philadelphia, are administered by a registered nonprofit corporation.

Allegory of the Schuykill River – Water Nymph and Bittern (William Rush)

La Premiere Pose (Howard Roberts)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art also administers the historic colonial-era houses of Mount Pleasant and Cedar Grove, both located in Fairmount Park.

Dying Centaur (Bronze, William Rimmer, 1967)

Mother and Child II (Bronze, Jacques Lipchitz, 1941)

Every year, several special exhibitions are held in the museum including touring exhibitions arranged with other museums in the United States and abroad.

The Birth of Venus (Nicolas Poussin)

Head of a Woman and Flowers (Oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet, 1871)

The final design of the main building, in the form of three linked Greek temples, is mostly credited to two architects in the architectural firms of Horace Trumbauer and Zantzinger, Borie and Medary – Howell Lewis Shay for the building’s plan and massing, and chief designer Julian Abele for the detail work and perspective drawings.

Virgin and Child in a Landscape (Oil on panel, 1500)

Still Life with a Tortoise (Oil on canvas, possibly by Thomas Black, 1743)

Abele, the first African-American student to graduate (in 1902) from the University of Pennsylvania‘s Department of Architecture (now known as Penn’s School of Designadapted Classical Greek temple columns for the design of the museum entrances, and was responsible for the colors of both the building stone and the figures added to one of the pediments.

Western Civilization (1933, Paul Jennewein, colored by Leon V. Solon)

In 1919, construction of the main building began when Mayor Thomas B. Smith laid the cornerstone in a Masonic ceremony. The building was constructed with dolomite quarried in Minnesota. Because of shortages caused by World War I and other delays, the new building was not completed until 1928.

Interior.  At the top of the stairs is a statue of Diana (Gilded copper sheets, Augustus Saint Gaudens, 1892-93)

To help assure the continued funding for the completion of the design, the wings were intentionally built first and, once the building’s exterior was completed, 20 second-floor galleries containing English and American art opened to the public on March 26, 1928, though a large amount of interior work was incomplete. The building is also adorned by a collection of bronze griffins, which were adopted as the symbol of the museum in the 1970s.

Apollo (Terra cotta model cast in bronze after 1715, Francois Girardon)

Statue of Summer as Ceres (Jacques-Augustin Pajou)

Here are some interesting trivia regarding this museum:

  • In 2016, 775,043 people visited the museum, ranking it among the top one hundred most-visited art museums in the world.
  • Based on gallery space, the museum is also one of the largest art museums in the world.
  • It is the third-largest art museum in the country.
  • The building’s eight pediments were intended to be adorned with sculpture groups but one, “Western Civilization” (1933) by  Paul Jennewein, and colored by Leon V. Solon, has been completed. This sculpture group, awarded the Medal of Honor of the Architectural League of New York, features polychrome sculptures of painted terra-cotta figures, depicting Greek deities and mythological figures.
  • Due to a partnership, enacted early in the museum’s history, between the museum and the University of Pennsylvania,  the museum does not have any galleries devoted to EgyptianRoman, or Pre-Columbian art. The university loaned the museum its collection of Chinese porcelain, and the museum loaned a majority of its Roman, Pre-Columbian, and Egyptian pieces to the university. However, the museum still retains a few important pieces for special exhibitions.
  • In recent decades, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has become known due to the role it played in the Rocky films—Rocky (1976) and five of its six sequels, IIIIIVRocky Balboa and Creed. Rocky Balboa‘s (portrayed by Sylvester Stallone) famous run up the 72 steps of the east entrance stairs (informally nicknamed the Rocky Steps) is often mimicked by  visitors to the museum.  The museum’s stairs has been named by Screen Junkies as the second most famous movie location behind only Grand Central Station in New York.
  • For the filming of Rocky III, a 2.6 m. (8.5 ft.) tall bronze statue of the Rocky Balboa character, created in 1980, was placed at the top of the museum’s front stairs in 1982 (and again for the film Rocky V). After filming was complete, Stallone donated the statue to the city of Philadelphia. In 2006, the statue was relocated, from the now-defunct Spectrum sports arena, to a new display area on the north side of the base of the stairs.

Jandy and the author in front of the bronze statue of the Rock Balboa character

Here’s a historical timeline of the museum’s collections:

  • Its permanent collection began with objects from the 1876 Centennial Exposition (America’s first World’s Fair) and gifts from the public impressed with the exhibition’s ideals of good design and craftsmanship.
  • After the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art was opened on May 10, 1877, European and Japanese fine and decorative art objects and books for the museum’s library were among the first donations.
  • Starting in 1882, Clara Jessup Moore donated a remarkable collection of antique furniture, enamels, carved ivory, jewelry, metalwork, glass, ceramics, books, textiles and paintings.
  • In 1893 Anna H. Wilstach bequeathed a large painting collection, including many American paintings, and an endowment of US$500 million for additional purchases.
  • Within a few years, works by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and George Inness were purchased
  • In 1894, the Countess de Brazza’s lace collection was acquired, forming the nucleus of the lace collection.
  • In 1899,Henry Ossawa Tanner‘s The Annunciation was bought.
  • In 1942, E. Gallatin accepted an offer from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to provide a home for his collection. Within a few months 175 works from his collection were moved to Philadelphia.
  • In 1945, the estate of George Grey Barnard sold his second collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
  • On December 27, 1950, after protracted discussions and many visits from Director Fiske Kimball and his wife Marie, Louise and Walter Arensberg presented their collection of over 1000 objects to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
  • Shortly after her 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco, Philadelphian Grace Kelly donated her wedding dress to the museum.
  • Extensive renovation of the building lasted from the 1960s through 1976. Major acquisitions included the Carroll S. Tyson, Jr. and Samuel S. White III and Vera White collections, 71 objects from designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and Marcel Duchamp‘s Étant donnés.
  • In 1980, the museum acquired After the Bath by Edgar Degas.
  • In 1986, the art collection of John D. McIlhenny was bequeathed to museum. It includes masterpieces such as Ingres’s ”Comtesse de Tournon,” Delacroix’s 1844 version of ”The Death of Sardanapalus,” Degas’s ”Interior” of 1888-89,” Mary Cassatt at the Louvre” and ”Woman Drying Herself,” Cezanne’s portrait of his wife, van Gogh’s ”Rain,” Seurat’s ”Trombone Player: Study for ‘La Parade,” Toulouse-Lautrec’s ”At the Moulin Rouge” and Matisse’s ”Still Life on Table – The Pineapple” (1925)
  • In 1989, the museum acquired Fifty Days at Iliam by Cy Twombly.

Death of Sardanapalus (Oil on canvas, Eugene Delacroix, 1844)

Making a Train (Oil on canvas, Seymour Joseph Guy, 1867)

The Asian collection is highlighted by paintings and sculpture from China, Japan and India; furniture and decorative arts (including major collections of Chinese, Japanese and Korean ceramics); a large and distinguished group of Persian and Turkish carpets; and rare and authentic architectural assemblages such as a Chinese palace hall, a Japanese teahouse, and a 16th-century Indian temple hall.

The Bride of Lammermoor (Oil on panel, Sir Edwin Landseer, 1830)

Basket of Fruit (Oil on canvas, Edouard Manet, 1864)

Dating from the medieval era to the present, the European collection encompasses Italian and Flemish early-Renaissance masterworks; strong representations of later European paintings (including French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism); sculpture (with a special concentration in the works of Auguste Rodin); decorative arts; tapestries; furniture; and period rooms and architectural settings ranging from the facade of a medieval church in Burgundy to a superbly decorated English drawing room by Robert Adam.

Arms and Armor.  At center is the Portrait of a Nobleman with Duelling Gauntlet (1562)

The comprehensive arms and armor collection, the second-largest collection in the United States, was acquired from celebrated collector Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch in 1976, the Bicentennial Anniversary of the American Revolution.  Spanning several centuries, it includes European and Southwest Asian arms and armor.

Check out “Von Kienbusch Galleries of Arms and Armor

The Angel of Purity – Maria Mitchell Memorial (Marble, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1902)

Diana (marble, 1826, Joseph Gott)

The American collection, among the finest in the United States, surveys more than three centuries of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, with outstanding strengths in 18th- and 19th-century Philadelphia furniture and silver, Pennsylvania German art, rural Pennsylvania furniture and ceramics, and the paintings of Thomas Eakins (the museum houses the most important Eakins collection in the world).

Sketches of Thomas Eakins

Portrait of Hayes Agnew – Agnew Clinic (Oil on canvas, Thomas Eakins, 1889)

Modern artwork includes works by American Modernists as well as those of Pablo PicassoJean MetzingerAntonio RottaAlbert GleizesMarcel DuchampSalvador Dalí and Constantin Brâncuși. The expanding collection of contemporary art includes major works by Cy TwomblyJasper Johns, and Sol LeWitt, among many others.

The Seesaw (Oil on canvas, Francisco Goya, 1791-92)

Venus and Adonis (Oil on canvas, Charles-Joseph Natoire, 1740)

The museum also houses an encyclopedic holding of costume and textiles, as well as prints, drawings, and photographs. For reasons of preservation, they are displayed in rotation.

Equestrian statue of George Washington on Eakins Oval

In the square in front of the museum is an equestrian statue of George Washington erected by the German sculptor Rudolf Siemering.

The Lion Fighter (1858, Carl Conrad Albert Wolff)

The grandiose flight of steps behind him are flanked on the left The Lion Fighter, by Carl Conrad Albert Wolff, and on the right is The Amazon Attacked by a Panther by August Kiss, both casts from the Rauch School.

Mounted Amazon Attacked by a Panther (August Kiss, 1839, cast 1929)

The one-acre, terraced Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden, dedicated to the museum’s late director Anne d’Harnoncourt (1943–2008) and designed by OLIN landscape architects working with Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, extends the Museum’s vast galleries to the outdoors while strengthening its connections to the city of Philadelphia and Fairmount Park.

Social Consciousness (Jacob Epstein)

The garden is divided into five sections: the Upper Terrace, the Lower Terrace, two graveled galleries and a paved plaza. Works here include the iconic Giant Three-Way Plug (Cube Tap) of Claes Oldenburg which was presented to the museum by Geraldine and David N. Pincus; Flukes, the large-scale sculpture of a whale’s tail by Gordon Gund; Steps (Philadelphia) and Pyramid (Philadelphia), two concrete block sculptures by Sol LeWitt; a granite bench and table as well as a marble chair by Scott Burton; Steel Woman II by Thomas Schütte; and Curve I, a remarkable work, from 1973, made of weathering steel by Ellsworth Kelly.

Giant 3-Way Plug – Cube Tap (Claes Oldenburg)

Philadelphia Museum of Art: 2600 Benjamin Franklin ParkwayPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania 19130, USA. Tel: (215) 763-8100 Website: www.philamuseum.org. Open Tuesdays- Sundays, 10 AM – 5 PM. Admission: US$20/adult, children below 12 years old is free.

Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration (New Jersey, U.S.A)

Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration

Aside from the Statue of Liberty National Monument on Liberty Island, the Statue Cruises round trip ferry transportation tickets we bought at Battery Park also included Ellis Island National Immigration Museum on Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay.

Ellis Island

After our tour of Liberty Island and its iconic Statue of Liberty, we all returned to the pier and queued up to board another Statue Cruise ferry for the short 10-min. (2.1 mile) trip to nearby, much smaller Ellis Island. Since 1808, the island has been owned and administered by the federal government of the United States  and, since 1965, operated by the National Park Service.

Check out “Statue of Liberty National Monument

Then and now. Crowds such as these were a common sight

Here are some interesting trivia regarding the island:

  • From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island was the United State’s largest and most active immigration station.
  • The original Ellis Island was the site of Fort Gibson (initially called Crown Fort, it was renamed after Col. James Gibson of the 4th Regiment of Riflemen, killed in the Siege of Fort Erieduring the War of 1812) and, later, a naval magazine.
  • The gateway for over 12 million immigrants to the U.S. processed by the S. Bureau of Immigration, it was the United States’ busiest immigrant inspection station for over 60 years (1892 – 1954).
  • Opened January 1, 1892, the island was, between 1892 and 1934, greatly expanded with land reclamation with the help of excess earth from the construction of New York City’s subway (and other projects). Today, the island has a land area of 11.1 hectares (27.5 acres), most of which is part of New Jersey.   It was long considered part of New York, but a 1998 United States Supreme Court decision found that most of the island is in  New Jersey. A contiguous area of 1.3 hectares (3.3 acres) is part of New York.
  • During and immediately following World War II, was designated as a permanent holding facility and was used to hold German merchant mariners and “enemy aliens” (Axis nationals detained for fear of spying, sabotage, and other fifth column activity). In December 1941, Ellis Island held 279 Japanese, 248 Germans, and 81 Italians removed from the East Coast.  A total of 7,000 Germans, Italians and Japanese would be ultimately detained at Ellis Island. It was also a processing center for returning sick or wounded U.S. soldiers, and a Coast Guard training base.
  • Its U.S. Marine Hospital Number 43, more widely known as the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, was the nation’s largest marine hospital. This extensive medical service at the immigrant station was operated here, from early 1902 to 1930, by United States Public Health Service to support the activities of the United States Bureau of Immigration.
  • Over 100 million Americans, about one-third to 40% of the population of the United States, are descendants of those immigrants who arrived in America at Ellis Island before dispersing to points all over the country.
  • Many reasons these immigrants came to the United States included escaping political and economic oppression, as well as persecution, destitution, and violence.
  • Ellis Island has been a source of inspiration or used as a subject in popular culture. Its imagery or representation has been employed in literature (including novels, short stories and poetry), in song, musical composition, dance, theatre, including vaudeville, burlesque, musical comedy, revue, legitimate theatre, motion pictures (silent and sound), newsreels, and in radio and television.

The Grand Hall

The first station, a three-story-tall wooden structure built of Georgia Pine, opened with fanfare on January 1, 1892 but, on June 15, 1897, a fire of unknown origin, possibly caused by faulty wiring, reduced it to ashes. No one was killed but most of the immigration records, dating back to 1855, of about 1.5 million immigrants that had been processed at the first building during its five years of use were destroyed.

The station’s new Main Building, one of the most symbolically important structures in American history, now houses the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration.  It was designed by Architects Edward Lippincott Tilton and William Alciphron Boring (who both received a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition for the building’s design) and the building was built at a cost of US$1.5 million.

Opened on December 17, 1900, the immigration station closed on November 12, 1954 and the buildings fell into disrepair and were abandoned. Attempts at redeveloping the site were unsuccessful until, on October 15, 1965, Ellis Island was proclaimed a part of Statue of Liberty National Monument and, exactly one year later, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The design for the significant restoration and adaptive use of the Beaux-Arts Main Building to its 1918 – 1924 appearance was undertaken by the Boston-based architectural firm Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc, together with the New York architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle. Built with a construction budget of US$150 million (raised by a campaign organized by the political fundraiser Wyatt A. Stewart), the building reopened on September 10, 1990.

Statue of Annie Moore, a 15 year old, rosy-cheeked Irish girl who was one of the 148 steerage passengers landed from the Guion steamship Nevada.  She is now distinguished by being the first registered in the book of the new landing bureau

On May 20, 2015, coinciding with the opening of the new Peopling of America galleries, the Ellis Island Immigration Museum was officially renamed the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration.

Face of an immigrant

This French Renaissance Revival-style museum, built of red brick with limestone trim, tells the moving tales of the immigrants who entered America through the golden door of Ellis Island.

The Baggage Room

The newly completed Peopling of America Center was architectural designed by Highland Associates, with construction executed by Phelps Construction Group.

As part of the National Park Service’s Centennial Initiative, the entire south side of the island, called by some the “sad side” of the island, is closed to the general public.

Some of the 28 unrestored buildings

It is the object of restoration efforts spearheaded by Save Ellis Island to restore the 28 buildings (including the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital) that have not yet been rehabilitated.  The New Ferry Building, built in the Art Deco style to replace an earlier one, was renovated in 2008 but remains only partially accessible to the general public.

Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital

In 2008, the museum’s library was officially named the Bob Hope Memorial Library in honor of the late comedian Bob Hope, one the station’s most famous immigrants. The Ellis Island Medal of Honor is awarded annually at ceremonies on the island.

The author and son Jandy at the Grand Hall

The museum’s self-guided exhibits tell the entire story of American immigration, including before and after the Ellis Island era, and chronicles Ellis Island’s role in immigration history.  It includes artifacts, photographs, prints, videos, interactive displays, oral histories and temporary exhibits:

  • The World Migration Globe features a radiant sphere which illustrates migration patterns around the world throughout human history.
  • Journeys: The Peopling of America – 1550s – 1890, located in the historic Railroad Ticket Office, is an exhibit, designed by ESI Design and fabricated by Hadley Exhibits, Inc., dedicated to exploring the earliest arrivals pre-dating the Ellis Island Era (1550-1890).  It bookends the Ellis Island era by chronicling immigration to America before the processing station opened in 1892 and after it closed in 1954, right up to the present. Here, visitors can move through the various galleries displaying each stage of the immigrant journey.
  • The Journey: New Eras of Immigration Exhibit, focusing on immigration from 1954 to present times, uses dynamic media and interactive elements to display the post-war immigration movement and changing demographic trends over the decades.
  • The American Family Immigration History Center is an exciting interactive area where you can access the passenger records of the ships that landed almost 65 million immigrants, crew members and other travelers at the Port of New York and Ellis Island from 1820 to 1957.
  • The American Immigrant Wall of Honor, outside of the main building, is the only place in the United States where an individual can honor his or her family heritage at a National Monument.  This permanent exhibit of individual or family names celebrating the immigrant experience contains a partial list of immigrants processed on the island. Inclusion on the list is made possible by a donation to support the facility..  It overlooks the Statue of Liberty behind a beautiful view of the New York skyline.
  • The American Flag of Faces, at the museum’s main entrance hall, is an interactive, animated display populated with images uploaded by individuals and families, which creates  a montage of the American flag.

A lady park ranger delivering a 5-min. talk before showing of “Island of Hope, Island of Tears” at Theater 2

There are also three theaters used for film and live performances. At Theater 2 (with a maximum limit of 140 people per showing), we watched the 30-min.,  award-winning film documentary “Island of Hope, Island of Tears,”  directed by Charles Guggenheim, which reveals how and why millions of immigrants journeyed across the world to Ellis Island, hoping for a better life for themselves and their descendants.

L-R: Grace, Kyle and Cheska

Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration: Ellis Island, New York City 10004, New York, U.S.A.  Tel: +1 646 356 2150.  Open daily (except December 25), 8:30 AM – 7 PM.

Old Philadelphia City Hall (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.)

The two-storey Old Philadelphia City Hall, located within the Independence Hall complex of Independence National Historical Park, next to Independence Hall, in Center City, was built with red bricks in the Georgian and  Federal style from 1790 to 1791 by master carpenter David Evans, Jr.

Old Philadelphia City Hall

During the 1790s, Philadelphia was the nation’s temporary capital and, although originally intended as Philadelphia’s City Hall (its second), the building was lent to the federal judiciary, serving as the home of the U.S. Supreme Court from the completion of its construction, from August 1791 until February 1800, when the national capital was moved to Washington, D.C.  The City Council met on the second floor while court convened below.

Here, the U.S. Supreme Court made its first decisions. Three chief justices,  John Rutledge (Rutledge Court),  John Jay (Jay Court), and Oliver Ellsworth (Ellsworth Court), officiated the Supreme Court from this location. The portraits of the latter two (Rutledge did not attend any session in Philadelphia), as well as those of   associate justices William Cushing, Bushrod Washington (nephew of George Washington) and Samuel Chase, can be seen in the Second Bank portrait gallery.

The ground floor area where the Supreme Court met

Also in the Second Bank is a very large painting of Philadelphia’s first City Hall (the one that used to stand on 2nd Street). Naturalization ceremonies for new citizens also took place in this courtroom and the building was the volunteer headquarters in the battle against the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793.

Afterward, the building continued to serve as Philadelphia’s City Hall until 1901 when the new city hall at Penn Square was completed. A contributing property to Independence National Historical Park, the building is owned by the City of Philadelphia which leases it to the National Park Service. The building was added to National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.

Old Philadelphia City Hall: 501 Chestnut Street at 5th Street, Philadelphia 19106, Pennsylvania. Open daily, 9 AM – 5 PM.  Admission is free but entrance is on a first-come, first-served basis. Capacity is nine visitors at a time.  Coordinates: 39°56′52″N 75°8′53″W.

Arch Street Friends Meeting House (Philadelphia, U.S.A.)

The Arch Street Friends Meeting House, within the Old City neighborhood, is a Meeting House of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Built in the Georgian architectural style to reflect the Friends’ testimonies of simplicity and equality, this building has, after more than two centuries of continuous use, changed little. Its grounds was the first burial ground for Quakers in Philadelphia.

Arch Street Friends Meeting House

The oldest Friends Meeting House still in use in Philadelphia, it is also the largest in the world. Originally designed by the Quaker carpenter Owen Biddle Jr. (best known as the author of a builder’s handbook, The Young Carpenter’s Assistant, published in 1805), architects Walter Ferris Price and Morris & Erskine also contributed to the design and construction of the building.

The two-storey meeting house has two separate entrances at the front of the building, a large first floor meeting space with benches, and an interior second-storey gallery. Since worship involves silent contemplation without clergy or ritual, there is no need for an altar, pulpit, steeples, stained glass windows and other religious symbols.

Here is the historical timeline of the building:

  • In 1701, Pennsylvania founder and Quaker William Penn deeded land to the Society of Friends to be used as a burial ground.
  • Between 1803 and 1805, the east wing and center of the meeting house was built according to a design by the Quaker carpenter Owen Biddle Jr.
  • From 1810–11, the building was enlarged with the addition of the west wing.
  • In 1896, an external restroom facility with toilets was added behind the West Room.
  • In 1902 and 1908, a kitchen was constructed
  • From 1968–69, the 1896, 1902, 1908 additions were removed and the well-known architecture firm Cope & Lippincott renovated the interior of the east wing and designed the two-storey addition (with a smaller room for meetings and worship and second floor conference rooms) behind the center building.
  • In 1971, the meeting house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
  • In 2011, as a consequence of the building being the only surviving documented work by Owen Biddle, it was declared as a National Historic Landmark and the Arch Street Meeting House Preservation Trust was formed.

Today, the Meeting House continues to be a center for worship and the activities of the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia, conducted since the 19th century, and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends living in Philadelphia, the southern half of New Jersey, Delaware and parts of Maryland is held here every spring.

Notable members of the Religious Society of Friends who worshiped at this meeting house include Sarah and Angelina Grimke, both abolitionists and woman rights advocates.  Noted painter Edward Hicks, the cousin of Elias Hicks, also attended meetings here.

The Meeting House has an entrance hall and three distinct sections.  The West Wing, added in 1811 to accommodate the women’s Monthly Meeting, is now the room used for worship.  Here, two staircases lead to the balcony. The middle section serves as the site of Monthly Meetings and special events.

The East Wing houses dioramas depicting the main events in the life of illustrious Quaker William Penn – Penn the Peacemaker laying down his sword (1668); Penn the Defender of Liberties in prison (1670); Penn the Builder of Democracy writing his “Frame of Government” (1682); Penn the Friend of the Indians completing a treaty with a tribe (1682); Penn the City Planner with his surveyor Thomas Holme, studying Holme’s map (1683); and Penn the Founder of Schools (1699).  Also on display is a dollhouse representing the home of noted Quaker journal-keeper Elizabeth Drinker and her husband Henry. Special shows are also held in the East Wing.

Since as early as 1683 (when Mary Lloyd was buried here), burials had been taking place at the ground  upon which the meetinghouse was built.  Around 20,000 are buried here including many victims of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. In 1880, burials here were officially ended.  Samuel Carpenter (1649–1714), a Deputy Governor under William Penn and the “First Treasurer” of Pennsylvania, and most of his family and his brother Abraham Carpenter (a non-member who married a Quaker) were buried here.  At dawn of November 10, Marines mark the grave of Samuel Nicholas (1744–1790), the founder and first commandant of the United States Marine Corps (curious considering the pacific stance of Friends), with a wreath.

Other notable interments here include:

Arch Street Friends Meeting House: 320 Arch Street cor. 4th Street, PhiladelphiaPennsylvania. Our Open Tuesdays – Saturdays, 9 AM – 5 PM (Grounds), Fridays – Saturdays, 10 AM – 4 PM (Building).  Admission: US$5 (general) and US$2 (children, seniors, veterans and students).  Website: www.historicasmh.org. Coordinates: 39°57′7.2″N 75°8′50.17″W.

Statue of Liberty National Monument (New York City, U.S.A.)

The iconic Statue of Liberty

Our visit to New York City wouldn’t be complete without visiting its iconic Statue of Liberty.  After breakfast at our hotel, we all took a taxi to Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, our gateway to Liberty Island, in Upper New York Bay. Though entrance to the national monument is free, we had to pay the cost (US$25.5 for adults and US$16 for children 4 – 12 years old) for the ferry service that all visitors must use.

A Statue Cruises ferry

Since 2007, Statue Cruises has been operating the transportation and ticketing facilities, replacing Circle Line, which had operated the service since 1953. The ferries also depart from Liberty State Park in Jersey City.  After paying up, we all boarded our ferry that would take us to Liberty Island. 

L-R: Cheska, Kyle (partly hidden), Grace, Jandy and the author at the third level of the ferry

Our ferry would also stop at  Ellis Island, north of Liberty Island, making this a combined trip. Both islands, which comprise the Statue of Liberty National Monument, were ceded by New York to the federal government in 1800. To have best views of the Statue of Liberty, we all sat at the third level. Our sailing time to the island took approximately 15 mins.

Check out “Ellis Island Immigration Museum”

This colossal, Neo-Classical copper sculpture, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel. An icon of freedom and of the United States, this statue’s foundation and pedestal was aligned so that it would face southeast, greeting ships entering the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, it was a welcoming sight to immigrants arriving from abroad as vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it as they proceeded toward Manhattan.

Liberty Island

Here are some interesting trivia regarding the statue:

  • This robed female figure, representing Libertas (the Roman goddess of freedom), wears a stola and pella (gown and cloak, common in depictions of Roman goddesses) and holds a torch aloft above her head.  In her left arm, she carries a tabula ansata (used to evoke the concept of law) inscribed in Roman numerals with “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” (July 4, 1776), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken chain, lies at her feet, half-hidden by her robes and difficult to see from the ground.
  • The statue is one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction, in which the exterior of the structure is not load bearing, but is instead supported by an interior framework.
  • The pedestal’s poured concrete walls, up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick (the concrete mass was the largest poured to that time), was faced with Stony Creek granite blocks (from the Beattie Quarry in Branford, Connecticut).
  • New York’s first ticker-tape parade was held during the statue’s dedication.   The parade route, beginning at Madison Square, proceeded to Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan by way of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, with a slight detour so the parade could pass in front of the World building on Park Row. As the parade passed the New York Stock Exchange, traders threw ticker tape from the windows, beginning the New York tradition of the ticker-tape parade. Estimates of the number of people who watched it ranged from several hundred thousand to a million.
  • Originally, the statue was a dull copper color but, shortly after 1900, a green patina (also called verdigris) caused by the oxidation of the copper skin, began to spread and, by 1906, had entirely covered the statue.  The Army Corps of Engineers studied the patina for any ill effects to the statue and concluded that it protected the skin. The statue was painted only on the inside. The Corps of Engineers also installed an elevator to take visitors from the base to the top of the pedestal.
  • In 1917, during World War I, images of the statue were heavily used in both recruitment posters and the Liberty Bond drives that urged American citizens to support the war financially. This impressed upon the public the war’s stated purpose—to secure liberty and served as a reminder that embattled France had given the United States the statue.
  • The statue sustained minor damage (mostly to the torch-bearing right arm) on July 30, 1916, during World War I, when German saboteurs detonated carloads of dynamite and other explosives that were being sent to Britain and France for their war efforts, on the Black Tom peninsula in Jersey City, New Jersey, in what is now part of Liberty State Park, close to Bedloe’s Island. Seven people were killed, the statue was closed for ten days and the cost to repair the statue and buildings on the island was about US$100,000. Since 1916, the narrow ascent to the torch was closed for public safety reasons, and it has remained closed ever since.
  • In 1929, the only successful suicide in the statue’s history occurred when a man climbed out of one of the windows in the crown and jumped to his death, glancing off the statue’s breast and landing on the base.
  • The statue was only illuminated every night, all night, beginning in 1957. During World War II, the statue, though open to visitors, was not illuminated at night due to wartime blackouts. It was lit briefly on December 31, 1943, and on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when its lights flashed “dot-dot-dot-dash,” the Morse code for V, for victory. From 1944 to 1945, new, powerful lighting was installed and, beginning on V-E Day, the statue was once again illuminated after sunset. The lighting then was for only a few hours each evening.
  • In 1946, the interior of the statue within reach of visitors was coated with a special plastic so that graffiti could be washed away.
  • In 1984, when the statue was closed to the public for renovation, workers erected the world’s largest free-standing scaffold,which obscured the statue from view.
  • The Statue of Liberty was one of the earliest beneficiaries of cause marketing. Its fundraising arm, the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., raised more than $350 million in donations.
  • The statue and the island was closed to the public a number of times. From May to December 1938 and from 1984 to 1986 it was closed for renovation and restoration. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the statue and the island was again closed to the public.  The island reopened at the end of 2001, the pedestal in August 2004 and the statue on July 4, 2009 (however, only a limited number of people would be permitted to ascend to the crown each day). The statue, including the pedestal and base, closed on October 29, 2011, for installation of new elevators and staircases and to bring other facilities, such as restrooms, up to code. The statue was reopened on October 28, 2012 but closed again a day later due to Hurricane Sandy.  The statue and Liberty Island reopened to the public on July 4, 2013. For part of October 2013, Liberty Island, along with other federally funded museums, parks, monuments, construction projects and buildings, was closed to the public due to the United States federal government shutdown of 2013.
  • The current torch, installed in 1986, has a flame is covered in 24-caratgold which reflects the sun’s rays in daytime.  It is lighted by floodlights at night.
  • is a frequent subject in popular culture. In music, the statue has been evoked to indicate support for American policies, as in Toby Keith‘s song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” In protest and opposition of the Reagan administration, it appeared on the cover of the Dead Kennedys‘ album Bedtime for Democracy.
  • In 1942, the torch is the setting for the climax of director Alfred Hitchcock‘s movie Saboteur. In the 1968 picture Planet of the Apes, the statue makes one of its most famous cinematic appearances in which it is seen half-buried in sand. In the 1996 science-fiction film Independence Day, it is knocked over while in the 2008 film Cloverfield, the statue’s head is ripped off.
  • In Jack Finney‘s time-travel novel Time and Again, the right arm of the statue, on display in the early 1880s in Madison Square Park, plays a crucial role.
  • Hundreds of replicas of the Statue of Libertyare displayed worldwide. A smaller version of the statue, one-fourth the height of the original and standing on the Île aux Cygnes, facing west toward her larger sister, was given by the American community in Paris to that city. A 9.1 m. (30 ft.) tall replica, which once stood atop the Liberty Warehouse on West 64th Street in Manhattan for many years,  now resides at the Brooklyn Museum. From 1949–1952, in a patriotic tribute, the Boy Scouts of America, as part of their Strengthen the Arm of Liberty campaign, donated about 200 replicas of the statue, made of stamped copper and 2,500 mm. (100 in.) in height, to states and municipalities across the United States. During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, a statue known as the Goddess of Democracy, though not a true replica, was temporarily erected.  Similarly inspired by French democratic traditions, the sculptors took care to avoid a direct imitation of the Statue of Liberty. A replica of the statue, as well as other recreations of New York City structures, is also part of the exterior of the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
  • The Statue of Liberty, as an American icon, has been depicted on the country’s coinage and stamps. It appeared on commemorative coins to mark its 1986 centennial and New York’s 2001 entry in the state quartersIn 1997, an image of the statue was chosen for the American Eagle platinum bullion coins  and was placed on the reverse (or tails) side of the Presidential Dollar series of circulating coins. Two images of the statue’s torch appear on the current ten-dollar bill. However, the statue’s intended photographic depiction on a 2010 forever stamp  instead proved to be the replica at the Las Vegas casino.
  • Between 1986 and 2000, New York State issued license plates with an outline of the statue to either the front or the side of the serial number. The Women’s National Basketball Association‘s New York Liberty used both the statue’s name and its image in their logo (however, the torch’s flame doubles as a basketball). Beginning in 1997, the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League depicted the statue’s head on their third jersey. The National Collegiate Athletic Association‘s 1996 Men’s Basketball Final Four, played at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Sports Complex, featured the statue in its logo. The Libertarian Party of the United States also uses the statue in its emblem.

The Statue of Liberty seen from our ferry

Édouard René de Laboulaye, French law professor and politician, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society,  a prominent and important political thinker of his time and an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, was said to have commented in 1865 that any monument raised to U.S. independence would properly be a joint project of the French and U.S. peoples and he inspired Bartholdi to create the statue.  Due to the post-war instability in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s and, in 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue with the U.S. providing the site and building the pedestal.

Frederic Auguste Bartholdi

Before the statue was fully designed, Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm. For publicity, the torch-bearing arm was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and, from 1876 to 1882, in Madison Square Park in Manhattan before it was returned to France to join the rest of the statue.

The torch-bearing arm

The head was exhibited at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair. To experience a changing perspective on the statue, Bartholdi gave it bold Classical contours and applied simplified modeling, reflecting the huge scale of the project and its solemn purpose. The statue was first built in France.

The statue’s head

Aside from Bartholdi, the following were also involved in the construction of the statue:

  • Architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the chief engineer of the project and Bartholdi’s friend and mentor, designed a brick pier within the statue, to which the skin would be anchored. After consultations with by the Paris firm of Gaget, Gauthier et Cie (Cie is the French abbreviation analogous to Co.), the metalwork foundry, Viollet-le-Duc chose copper sheets, the metal which would be used for the skin, and repoussé, the method used to shape it, in which the sheets were heated and then struck with wooden hammers. An advantage of this choice was that the entire statue would be light for its volume. The head and arm had been built with assistance from Viollet-le-Duc, who fell ill in 1879 and soon died, leaving no indication of how he intended to transition from the copper skin to his proposed masonry pier.
  • Gustave Eiffel, the innovative designer and builder of the Eiffel Tower, and structural engineer, Maurice Koechlin, decided to abandon the proposed masonry pier and instead build an iron truss To prevent galvanic corrosionbetween the copper skin and the iron support structure, Eiffel insulated the skin with asbestos impregnated with shellac. To make it easier for visitors to reach the observation point in the crown, Eiffel included two interior spiral staircases. He also provided access to an observation platform surrounding the torch. As the pylon tower arose, Eiffel and Bartholdi coordinated their work carefully so that completed segments of skin would fit exactly on the support structure. The components of the pylon tower were built in the Eiffel factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret.
  • Joachim Goschen Giæver, a Norwegian immigrant civil engineer, designed the structural framework for the Statue of Liberty.  Working from drawings and sketches produced by Gustave Eiffel, he did the design computations, detailed fabrication and construction drawings, and oversight of construction.
  • Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, succeeded Laboulaye (upon his death in 1883) as chairman of the French committee.
  • Richard Morris Hunt designed the pedestal on Bedloe Island. Containing elements of classical architecture, including Doric portals, as well as some elements influenced by Aztec architecture, its large mass is fragmented with architectural detail, in order to focus attention on the statue. In form, it is a truncated pyramid, 19 m. (62 ft.) square at the base and 12 m. (39.4 ft.) at the top, with four sides identical in appearance.
  • Charles Pomeroy Stone, a former army general, oversaw the construction work on the pedestal.
  • Frederick Law Olmsted, renowned landscape architect and co-designer of New York’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, supervised a cleanup of Bedloe’s Island in anticipation of the dedication.
  • Gutzon Borglum, who later sculpted Mount Rushmore, redesigned the torch, replacing much of the original copper with stained glass.

Check out “Eiffel Tower

In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue’s big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P. Morton.  The completed statue was formally presented to Ambassador Morton at a ceremony in Paris on July 4, 1884. By January 1885, after sufficient progress on the pedestal pedestal (its cornerstone was laid in 1884 and it was completed on April 1886) had occurred, the Statue of Liberty was disassembled and crated for its ocean voyage to New York City on board the French steamer Isère.

Liberty Island Pier

On June 17, 1885, the statue safely reached the New York port, with 200,000 people lining the docks and hundreds of boats putting to sea to welcome the French vessel. Upon arrival, it was assembled on the on what was then called Bedloe’s Island (officially renamed Liberty Island in 1956 by an Act of Congress).

The statue’s pedestal

A dedication ceremony on October 28, 1886, presided over by President Grover Cleveland (a former New York governor), marked the statue’s completion. Until 1901, the statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board  and then by the Department of War.  Since 1933, it has been maintained by the National Park Service. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge used his authority under the Antiquities Act to declare the statue a National Monument.

Liberty Island Pavilion

Diorama of Bartholdi inside pavilion

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the statue transferred to the National Park Service (NPS) and, in 1937, the NPS gained jurisdiction over the rest of Bedloe’s Island. In 1965, nearby Ellis Island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument by proclamation of President Lyndon Johnson. In 1984, the Statue of Liberty was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The author with grandson Kyle

At the western end of Liberty Island is a group of statues, all works of Maryland sculptor Phillip Ratner, honoring those closely associated with the Statue of Liberty.

Emma Lazarus

Two Americans— Joseph Pulitzer (publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, who announced a drive to raise $100,000 for the statue) and poet Emma Lazarus (whose sonnet, “The New Colossus,” is uniquely identified with the Statue of Liberty)—and three Frenchmen—Bartholdi, Eiffel, and Laboulaye—are depicted.

Grace and Jandy

Kyle and Cheska

The statue has the following physical characteristics:

  • Height of copper statue – 46 m. (151 ft., 1 in.)
  • Foundation of pedestal (ground level) to tip of torch – 93 m. (305 ft., 1 in.)
  • Heel to top of head – 34 m. (111 ft., 1 in.)
  • Height of hand – 5 m. (16 ft., 5 in.)
  • Index finger – 2.44 m. (8 ft., 1 in.)
  • Circumference at second joint – 1.07 m. (3 ft., 6 in.)
  • Head from chin to cranium – 5.26 m. (17 ft., 3 in.)
  • Head thickness from ear to ear – 3.05 m. (10 ft.)
  • Distance across the eye – 0.76 m. (2 ft., 6 in.)
  • Length of nose – 1.48 m. (4 ft., 6 in.)
  • Right arm length – 12.8 m. (42 ft.)
  • Right arm greatest thickness – 3.66 m. (12 ft.)
  • Thickness of waist – 10.67 m. (35 ft.)
  • Width of mouth – 0.91 m. (3 ft.)
  • Tablet, length – 7.19 m. (23 ft., 7 in.)
  • Tablet, width – 4.14 m. (13 ft., 7 in.)
  • Tablet, thickness – 0.61 m. (2 ft.)
  • Height of pedestal – 27.13 m. (89 ft.)
  • Height of foundation – 19.81 m. (65 ft.)
  • Weight of copper used in statue – 27.22 tons (60,000 lbs.)
  • Weight of steel used in statue – 113.4 tons (250,000 lbs.)
  • Total weight of statue – 204.1 tons (450,000 lbs.)
  • Thickness of copper sheeting – 2.4 mm. (3/32 of an inch)

Back at Liberty Island Pier for ferry to Ellis Island

Statue of Liberty National Monument: Liberty Island, New York Harbor, New York City 10004, United States.Tel: +1 646 356 2150.  Open daily (except December 25), 8:30 AM – 7 PM.

All ferry riders are subject to security screening, similar to airport procedures, prior to boarding. Visitors intending to enter the statue’s base and pedestal must obtain a complimentary museum/pedestal ticket along with their ferry ticket. You can buy tickets online at www.statueoflibertytickets.com.

Those wishing to climb the staircase within the statue to the crown purchase a special ticket, which may be reserved up to a year in advance. A total of 240 people per day are permitted to ascend: ten per group, three groups per hour. Large bags are not allowed on Liberty or Ellis Islands. Backpacks, strollers and large umbrellas are not permitted in the Monument. Climbers may bring only medication and cameras—lockers are provided for other items—and must undergo a second security screening.

St. Augustine Catholic Church (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.)

St. Augustine Catholic Church

The historic and pretty ornate St. Augustine Catholic  Church (also called Olde St. Augustine’s), built to replace the Old St. Augustine Church (the first Order of Hermits of St. Augustine church founded in the United States) which was completed in 1801 and burned down in the anti-Catholic Philadelphia Nativist Riots on May 8, 1844  (all that remained was the back wall of the altar), was designed by architect  Napoleon LeBrun who also designed Philadelphia landmarks as the Academy of Music (eventual home of the Philadelphia Orchestra) and the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul.

The church’s Palladian-style facade

The present church, whose cornerstone was laid on May 27, 1847, was completed in December 1848 and consecrated by Bishop Francis Kenrick and Archbishop John Hughes who presided over High Mass on November 5, 1848.

The main entrance

In 1922, the altar area underwent significant restoration and change, the vestibule of the church was changed significantly and stairs were put in when 4th Street was excavated to pass under the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. The nave of the church is original. The color in the brick facade of the church indicates where the original church brick ends and where the 1922 brick begins. On June 15, 1976, the church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The magnificent interior

On December 1992, a severe storm severely damaged the church’s steeple whose debris fell onto the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, closing for three days. The damaged steeple had to be disassembled and removed. A 50-ft. chasm opened in the church roof caused the priceless painting and murals inside to suffer water damage. On October 18, 1995, a new steeple was erected.

Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) meets the scared Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) inside the church in The Sixth Sense

The interior and exterior of St. Augustine’s Church was featured in the 1999 M. Night Shyamalan spooky thriller The Sixth Sense (where Bruce Willis, as Dr. Malcolm Crowe, and Haley Joel Osment, as Cole Sear, meet for the first time) and the 2007 action movie Shooter  (in which the church’s bell tower figures in an assassination plot).

The Shooter

This church is the parish of choice of many Filipino-American Catholics (who increased the congregation’s numbers in the 1990s) from Philadelphia, the city’s suburbs and the tri-state area (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware). In fact, on January 11, 1992, an exact replica of Santo Niño de Cebú was installed and dedicated here and Filipinos have held a special mass and festivals (also called Sinulog) for the Santo Niño, making it the National Shrine for devotion to Santo Nino in North America.

This Palladian-style (an Italian-Renaissance variant) church, with its non-cruciform plan, has a flat, decorated roof, semicircular arched window, an enormous cleaving balcony and two sets of stained glass windows, each dedicated to a saint. The impressive, ornate foyer, though lower than the church (you need to take another set of stairs to go up into the church), is treated like a part of the interior.

The main arched altar, framed by an archway supported by brown Corinthian columns flanked by flying angels, consists of white marble with shafts of Mexican onyx bordering the tabernacle. Behind the altar is a Crucifixion tableau, painted by Hans Hansen in 1926, crowned by the words “The Lord Seeth.” Above it sits a domed skylight.  The wrap-around, 3-sided gallery essentially divides the space vertically in half.

The main altar

The beautiful ceiling frescoes, depicting scenes from “St. Augustine in Glory,” as well as murals on either side of the altar were painted by Philip Costaggini (who painted part of the frieze on the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.) in 1884 and are the oldest in any church in America.

Statue of St. Nicholas Tolentine at the ornate foyer

Statue of St. Thomas of Villanova

St. Augustine Catholic Church: 243 North Lawrence St., PhiladelphiaPennsylvania 19106, United States.  Tel: +1 215-627-1838. Fax: 215-627-3911. E-mail: staugustineparish09@gmail.com.  Website: www.st-augustinechurch.com. Mass schedules: Mondays – Fridays: 12:05 PM (10 AM during legal holidays), Saturdays (Vigil – 5:15 PM) and Sundays (9 AM, 11 AM and 7 PM). Novena prayers to Santo Nino are held after the 11 AM Sunday Mass. Open Mondays to Fridays, 9 AM to 5 PM; weekends, 9 AM to the conclusion of the evening masses.

30th Street Station (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.)

30th Street Station

The 52,000 m² (562,000 ft²) 30th Street Station, the main railroad station in Philadelphia and one of the seven stations in Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority‘s (SEPTA) Center City fare zone, sits across from the former United States Post Office-Main Branch. A major stop on Amtrak‘s (National Railroad Passenger Corporation) Northeast and Keystone Corridors, it is Amtrak’s 3rd-busiest station and the busiest of the 24 stations served in Pennsylvania. On an average day in 2013, about 11,300 people boarded or left trains in Philadelphia, nearly twice as many as in the rest of the Pennsylvania stations combined. This was to be our entry point to Philadelphia (from New York City) and exit point from Philadelphia to Baltimore (Maryland).

The main concourse

Originally known as the Pennsylvania Station–30th Street (in accord with the naming style of other Pennsylvania Stations), the enormous, steel-framed structure was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White (the successor to D.H. Burnham & Company). Construction began in 1927 and the station opened in 1933, starting with two platform tracks.

The author and son Jandy at the waiting area

From 1988-1991, the building was restored and renovated, at a cost of US$75 million,  by Dan Peter Kopple & Associates, with updated retail amenities added including several shops, a large food court, car rental facilities, Saxby’s CoffeeDunkin’ Donuts, both in the South Arcade and South Concourse, and others.

Dunkin’ Donut outlet

Above the passenger areas, 280,000 sq. ft. of office space was modernized to house approximately 1,100 Amtrak employees.  The former mail handling facility was converted into an underground parking garage. The 30th Street Station is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Train Schedule Display Board

The building’s architecturally interesting exterior, an adaptation and transformation of Neo-Classical elements into a more modern, streamlined Art Deco architectural style, has a pair of soaring, columned porte-cocheres on the west and east façade, its best known features.

Waiting Area

The cavernous, 290 by 135 ft. main passenger concourse, notable for its stylistic and functional elements, has ornate Art Deco décor, with a vast waiting room faced with travertine and a soaring  coffered ceiling, painted gold, red and cream, with beautiful chandeliers.

Ticket offices

Works of art are located throughout the building. Prominently displayed within the waiting area is the Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial, sculpted in 1950 by Walker Hancock. Honoring 1,307 Pennsylvania Railroad employees (listed in alphabetical order on the four sides of the base of that sculpture) killed in World War II (out of the more than 54,000 who served), it consists of a bronze statue of the archangel Michael lifting the body of a dead soldier out of the flames of war.

Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial

The Spirit of Transportation, a bas relief sculpture of Karl Bitter, was executed in 1895 and originally placed in the waiting room of Broad Street Station, Philadelphia. On January, 1955, it was moved to current site in the North Waiting Room. The Spirit of Transportation is represented in triumphal procession of progress. It features a central female figure sitting in a horse-drawn carriage, while children cradle models of a steamship, steam locomotive and dirigible, a prophetic vision of a mode of transportation to come.

Spirit of Transportation bas-relief sculpture

The station was featured in the 1981 film Blow Out, the 1983 film Trading Places, the 1985 film Witness, the 2000 film Unbreakable, the 2010 video game Heavy RainAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 Episode 7, and the 2015 film The Visit. It is within walking distance of various attractions in West Philadelphia, notably the University of PennsylvaniaDrexel University, and the University City Science Center, all in University City. 

Kyle, Grace, Cheska and Jandy waiting for our train to Baltimore at the train platform

30th Street Station: 2955 Market Street, PhiladelphiaPennsylvaniaUnited States

Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola (New York City, U.S.A.)

The very first mass we attended in the US, on the eve of the Feast of St. John the Baptist, was held at the beautiful Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was officiated by the very friendly and welcoming Fr. Dennis J. Yesalonia, S.J.

Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola

This Roman Catholic parish church, under the authority of the Archdiocese of New York, is administered by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The church is part of a Jesuit complex on the block that includes Wallace Hall, the parish hall (beneath the church), the rectory (at the midblock location on Park Ave.), the grade school of St. Ignatius’s School (on the north midblock location of 84th St., behind the church) and the high school of Loyola School (also 980 Park Ave.) at the northwest corner of Park Ave. and 83rd St. The Regis High School (55 East 84th St.), another Jesuit high school, occupies the midblock location on the north side of 84th St..

Established in 1851 as St. Lawrence O’Toole‘s (a twelfth-century bishop of Dublin) Church, a wooden church was erected in 1852 but was replaced, in 1853, by a modest brick structure. In 1886, it was entrusted to the care of the Society of Jesus  the Jesuits’ first major apostolate in the Yorkville area of New York.  In 1898, it was granted permission by Rome to change the patron saint of the parish to St. Ignatius of Loyola.

The church’s foundation was built from 1884 to 1886 and the present German Baroque-style church, designed by Arch. J. William Schickel of Schickel & Ditmars, was built from 1895 to 1900. On December 11, 1898, it was dedicated by the Most Reverend Michael Corrigan, third Archbishop of New York. On March 4, 1969, the church was declared as a New York City Landmark and, on July 24, 1980, the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The beautiful church interior

Notable people whose funerals were held here include:

This 90 ft. high and 87 ft. wide architectural gem has a Classical Park Avenue exterior that is not static, with the central division raised in slight relief beyond the side divisions.  Its façade has 2 unbroken vertical orders, a Palladian arched window and a tri-part horizontal division which suggest the central nave and side aisles beyond. Directly beneath the pediment are inscribed the words “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” (“To the Greater Glory of God”, the motto of the Society of Jesus,  and the Great Seal of the Society (composed of a cross, three nails, and the letters I H S, the first three letters of Jesus’ name in Greek which later became a Latin acronym denoting Jesus the Savior of Humankind).

The altar

The varying intervals between the symmetrically positioned pilasters create a subtly undulating dynamism that introduces a note of syncopated rhythm reminiscent of the exterior of Il Gesù, the Jesuits’ mother church in Rome. Two copper-capped tower bases, on either side of the central pediment, are hints of the abandoned grander scheme of a pair of towers designed to reach 210 ft. above the ground. The church’s intricate marble work, executed by the firm of James G. Batterson, Jr., and John Eisele of New York, includes American (pink Tennessee), European (yellow Siena, veined Pavonazzo and white Carrara) and African (red-veined Numidian and pink Algerian) marble. The soaring ceiling was beautifully crafted and the intricate stained glass windows tells the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection.

The high ceiling

The marble mosaic Stations of the Cross panels were designed by Professor Paoletti for Salviati & Company of Venice.  The great 12-panel bronze doors, located at the sanctuary end of the side aisles, were designed by the Rev. Patrick O’Gorman, S.J. (pastor from 1924 to 1929) and were crafted by the Long Island Bronze Company. The Carrara marble Jesuit statues (including St. Francis Xavier and St. John Francis Regis) were carved by the Joseph Sibbel Studio of New York.  The church organ, built by N.P. Mander of London, was dedicated in 1993 and is New York City’s largest mechanical action (tracker) pipe organ.

The semicircular wrought-iron baptistery screen of gilt flaming swords, in the Chapel of John the Baptist, was wrought by Mr. John Williams to the designs of William Schickel. The Carrara marble baptistery font, set above the marble pavement, was designed “by Heaton, Butler & Bayne of London, with slight modifications made by Mr. John Buck of the Ecclesiastical Department of the Gorham Company of New York (also responsible for the cutting and installing the mosaic’s tesserae – the pieces comprising the mosaic).

The baptistery’s altar and the surrounding curved walls, designed and executed under the direction of Mr. Caryl Coleman of the Ecclesiastical Department of the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company (who also executed the baptistery’s semi-dome), were made with Pavonazzo marble inlaid with mosaics (composed of that company’s justly famous opalescent Favrile glass, as delicate as the Venetian glass mosaics above are bold).

Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola: 980 Park Ave. cor. East 84th St., New York City, New York 10028.  Tel: +212-288-3588. Website: www.stignatiusloyola.org. Mass Schedule: Mondays-Fridays, 8:30 AM, 12:10 PM and 5:30 PM; Saturdays, 8:30 AM an 5:30 PM; Sundays, 8 AM, 9:30 AM, 11 AM (Solemn Mass) and 7:30 PM.

National September 11 Memorial & Museum (New York City, U.S.A.)

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum (also known as the 9/11 Memorial and 9/11 Memorial Museum), located at the former location of the Twin Towers (destroyed during the September 11 attacks) at the World Trade Center site, are the principal memorial and museum, respectively, that commemorate the September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed 2,977 victims, and the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, which killed six.

September 11 Memorial Plaza

The memorial was designed by Israeli architect Michael Arad (whose Reflecting Absence, on January 2004,was selected as the winner, from among 5,201 entries from 63 countries, of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition) of Handel Architects, a New York- and San Francisco-based firm, who worked with landscape-architecture firm Peter Walker and Partners on the design.

Layout of Memorial Plaza

Featuring a forest of trees with two square pools in the center where the Twin Towers stood, its design was consistent with the original Daniel Libeskind master plan which called for the memorial to be 9.1 m (30 ft.) below street level (originally 21 m./70 ft.) in a plaza. Started on August 2006, the memorial was dedicated on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the attacks, an was opened to the public the following day. The museum was dedicated on May 15, 2014 and opened on May 21.

South Pool

Two 4,000 m2 (1 acre) pools, with the largest man-made waterfalls (intended to mute the sounds of the city, making the site a contemplative sanctuary) in the United States, comprise the footprints of the Twin Towers, symbolizing the loss of life and the physical void left by the attacks. Delta Fountains engineered the fountain. Many parts of the memorial were planted by Walker with white oaks while almost 400 sweet gum and swamp white oak trees fill the remaining 24,000 m2 (6 acres) of the Memorial Plaza, enhancing the site’s reflective nature.

Parapet on wall with bronze plates inscribed with victims’ names

The parapets of the walls of the memorial pools are attached with 76 bronze plates inscribed with the names, arranged according to an algorithm, of 2,983 victims – 2,977 killed in the September 11 attacks and six killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Flower offering for one of the victims

Around the perimeter of the North Pool are the names of the employees and visitors in the North Tower (WTC 1), the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 11 (which struck the North Tower), and the 5 employees and a visitor, all adults, of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, all memorialized on Panel N-73.

North Pool

Around the perimeter of the South Pool are the names of the employees and visitors in the South Tower (WTC 2), the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 175 (which struck the South Tower), the employees, visitors, and bystanders in the immediate vicinity of the North and South Towers, the first responders (listed with their units) who died during rescue operations, the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 (which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania) and American Airlines Flight 77 (which struck the Pentagon), and the employees at the Pentagon.

Though company names are not included, the company employees and visitors are listed together. Passengers on the 2 United Airlines and 2 American Airline flights are listed under their flight numbers. The phrase “and her unborn child” follows the names of ten pregnant women who died on 9/11 and one who died in the 1993 attack.

Survivor Tree

The “Survivor Tree,” a symbol of hope and rebirth, is a 2.4 m.( 8-ft.) tall callery pear tree (planted during the 1970s near Buildings 4 and 5, in the vicinity of Church St.) which was recovered, badly burned with one living branch, from the rubble at the World Trade Center site on October 2001. Nursed back to health by the Bronx nursery, the then 9.1 m. (30 ft.) tall tree was returned, on December 2010, to the World Trade Center site and is now a prominent part of the memorial.

September 11 Memorial Museum

The September 11 Memorial Museum, dedicated on May 15, 2014 and opened to the public on May 21, was built at the former location of Fritz Koenig‘s The Sphere, a large metallic sculpture placed in the middle of a large pool between the Twin Towers.  Designed by Davis Brody Bond, the museum, about 21 m. (70 ft.) below ground and accessible through a pavilion designed by Snøhetta,  encloses 10,000 m2 (110,000 sq. ft.) of publicly accessible space. Its exhibits include 23,000 images, 10,300 artifacts (including wrecked emergency vehicles, two tridents from the Twin Towers and pieces of metal from all seven World Trade Center buildings including the last piece of steel to leave Ground Zero in May 2002), nearly 2,000 oral histories of those killed  (mostly provided by friends and families) and over 500 hours of video.

National September 11 Memorial & Museum: 180 Greenwich St, New York City, New York 10007. Open daily, 7:30 AM – 9 PM. Admission: US$24/adult, children below 12 years old is free.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City, U.S.A.)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is the permanent home, of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year.

Museum Lobby

Overlooking Central Park, the site’s proximity to the park afforded relief from the noise, congestion and concrete of the city and nature also provided the museum with inspiration.  In 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the museum, and it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City.

Atrium

Established in 1939 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation  (established in 1937, it fosters the appreciation of modern art) as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.  The museum adopted its current name in 1952, after the death of its founder.

The skylight

In 1959, the museum moved, from rented space, to its current Modernist, distinctively cylindrical building, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright who experimented with his organic style in an urban setting.

It took him 15 years, 700 sketches, and six sets of working drawings to create the museum. The museum underwent extensive expansion and renovations in 1992 (when an adjoining tower was built) and from 2005 to 2008.

Three sculptures by Edgar Degas

Three sculptures by Constantin Brancusi

The building was conceived, by Rebay, as a “temple of the spirit” that would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern pieces in the collection.

The Studio (1928,oil and black crayon on canvas, Pablo Picasso)

Accordionist (1911, oil on canvas, Pablo Picasso)

Woman With Yellow Hair (1931, oil on canvas, Pablo Picasso)

The only museum designed by Wright and his last major work (he died six months before its opening on October 21, 1959), the appearance of the building, viewed from the street, is in sharp contrast to the typically rectangular Manhattan buildings that surround it (a fact relished by Wright).

Bend in the Road Through the Forest (Paul Cezanne)

Still Life Plate of Peaches (Paul Cezanne)

Still Life Flask, Glass and Jug (Paul Cezanne)

It looks like a white ribbon curled into a cylindrical stack, wider at the top than the bottom, and displaying nearly all curved surfaces.

Circumcision (oil on canvas, 1946, Jackson Pollock)

Plate from Poor Richard suite (1971, Philip Guston)

Internally, Wright’s plan for the viewing gallery was for the museum guests to ride to the top of the building by elevator, to descend, at a leisurely pace, along the gentle slope of the unique, continuous helical ramp gallery, extending up from ground level in a long, continuous spiral (recalling a nautilus shell) along the outer edges of the building and ending just under the ceiling skylight at the top.

The Antipope (December 1941–March 1942, Max Ernst)

Polyphonic (1945 Oil on canvas, Perle Fine)

The atrium of the building was to be viewed as the last work of art. The open rotunda afforded viewers the unique possibility of simultaneously seeing several bays of work on different levels and even to interact with guests on other levels.

Black Lines (Vassily Kandinsky)

Striped (1934, oil with sand on canvas, Vassily Kandinsky)

Wright’s spiral design, embracing nature, with continuous spaces flowing freely one into another, also expresses his take on Modernist architecture’s rigid geometry.

Dining Room on the Garden (1934-35, oil on canvas, Pierre Bonnard)

Invention (Composition No. 3) – 1933,oil on canvas, Rudolf Bauer

To reduce the cost, the building’s surface was made out of concrete, inferior to the stone finish, with a red-colored exterior, that Wright had wanted and which was never realized.

Men in the City (1919, oil on canvas, Fernand Leger)

The Smokers (1911-12, oil on canvas, Fernand Leger)

Also largely for financial reasons, Wright’s original plan for an adjoining tower, artists’ studios and apartments also went unrealized until the renovation and expansion.

Eiffel Tower (1911, oil on canvas, Robert Delaunay)

Portrait of Countess Albazzi, (1880, Pastel on primed canvas, Edouard Manet)

Wright’s carefully articulated lighting effects for the main gallery skylight had been compromised when it was covered during the original construction but, in 1992, was restored to its original design.

In the Vanilla Grove, Man and Horse (Paul Gaugin)

The Kiss (1927, Max Ernst)

The “Monitor Building” (as Wright called it), the small rotunda next to the large rotunda, was intended to house apartments for Rebay and Guggenheim but, instead, became offices and storage space. In 1965, the second floor of the Monitor building was renovated to display the museum’s growing permanent collection.

Nude Model in the Studio (1912-13, oil on burlap, Fernand Leger)

With the 1990–92 restoration of the museum, it was turned over entirely to exhibition space and christened the Thannhauser Building, in honor of art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser, one of the most important bequests to the museum. Much of the interior of the building was restored during the 1992 renovation.

Orphism (Robert Delauney)

Also in 1992, a new, adjoining rectangular 10-storey limestone tower, taller than the original spiral and designed by the architectural firm of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, expanded the exhibition space with the addition of four additional exhibition galleries with flat walls.

Knight Errant (1916, oil on canvas, Oskar Kokoschka)

Yellow Bar (Rolph Scarlett)

Between September 2005 and July 2008, the museum underwent a significant exterior restoration to repair cracks and modernize systems and exterior details. It was completed on September 22, 2008.  On October 6, 2008, the museum was registered as a National Historic Landmark.

Improvisation 28 (second version) – Vassily Kandinsky

In 2001, the museum opened the 8,200 sq. ft. (760 m2) Sackler Center for Arts Education (a gift of the Mortimer D. Sackler family), a facility located on the lower level of the museum, below the large rotunda.

Woman with Parakeet (1871, oil on canvas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

Listening (1920, oil on canvas, Heinrich Campendonk)

It provides classes and lectures about the visual and performing arts and opportunities to interact with the museum’s collections and special exhibitions through its labs, exhibition spaces, conference rooms and 266-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater.

Paris Through the Window (1913, oil on canvas, Marc Chagall)

The Flying Carriage (1913, oil on canvas, Marc Chagall)

The Soldier Drinks (1911-12, oil on canvas, Marc Chagall)

Beginning with Solomon R. Guggenheim‘s original collection works of the old masters since the 1890s, the museum’s collection (shared with the museum’s sister museums in Bilbao, Spain, and elsewhere) has grown organically, over eight decades. It is founded upon several important private collections. Here’s a chronology of the museum’s acquisitions:

Personage (1925, oil on canvas, Juan Miro)

  • In 1948, the collection was greatly expanded through the purchase of art dealer Karl Nierendorf’s estate of some 730 objects, notably German expressionist.

Mountains at Saint Remy (1889, oil on canvas, Vincent Van Gogh)

Landscape with Snow (1888, oil on canvas, Vincent Van Gogh)

Before the Mirror (1876, oil on canvas, Edouard Manet)

Arc of Petals (Alexander Calder)

Adam and Eve (Constantin Brancusi)

Little French Girl (Constantin Brancusi)

On Brooklyn Bridge (1917, oil on canvas, Albert Gleizes)

Woman with Animals (1914, oil on canvas, Albert Gleizes)

  • In 1992, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation donated 200 of Mapplethorpe’s best photographs to the foundation, an acquisition that initiated the foundation’s photography exhibition program.  Spanning his entire output, it includes early collages, Polaroids, portraits of celebrities, self-portraits, male and female nudes, flowers and statues, mixed-media constructions and included his well-known 1998 Self-Portrait.

  • In 2001, a large collection of the Bohen Foundation was gifted to the foundation. It consists of commissioned works of art (Pierre Huyghe, Sophie Calle, etc.), with an emphasis on film, video, photography and new media.

The building has been widely praised and inspired many other architects. However, the design polarized architecture critics who believed that the building would overshadow the museum’s artworks.

Alchemy (Jackson Pollock)

Some artists have also protested the display of their work in such a space. The continuous spiral ramp gallery, tilted with non-vertical curved walls, presented challenges to the museum’s ability to present art at all as it is awkward and difficult to properly hang paintings in the shallow, windowless concave exhibition niches that surround the central spiral.

The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan (Paul Cezanne)

Bibemus (Paul Cezanne)

Canvasses must be mounted raised from the wall’s surface. Paintings hung slanted back would appear “as on the artist’s easel.” There was also limited space within the niches for sculpture.

The Break of Day (1937, oil on canvas, Paul Delvaux)

Landscape Near Antwerp (1906, oil on canvas, Georges Braque)

The slope of the floor and the curvature of the walls also combined to produce vexing optical illusions. Three-dimensional sculpture or any vertical object appears tilted in a “drunken lurch.”

The Sun in Its Jewel Case (Yves Tanguy)

To compensate for the space’s weird geometry, special plinths were constructed at a particular angle, so that pieces were not at a true vertical would appear to be so.

The Red Bird (1944, oil on canvas, Adolph Gottlieb)

Fruit Dish on a Checkered Table Cloth (Juan Gris)

However, this trick proved impossible for an Alexander Calder mobile whose wire inevitably hung at a true plumb vertical, “suggesting hallucination” in the disorienting context of the tilted floor.

The Fourteenth of July (Pablo Picasso)

Bird on a Tree (Pablo Picasso)

Three Bathers (Pablo Picasso)

Some of the most popular and important art exhibitions held here include:

  • The first season “Works and Process,” a series of performances at the Guggenheim begun in 1984, consisted ofPhilip Glass with Christopher Keene on Akhnaten and Steve Reich and Michael Tilson Thomas on The Desert Music.
  • “Africa: The Art of a Continent” (1996)
  • “China: 5,000 Years” (1998)
  • “Brazil: Body & Soul” (2001)
  • “The Aztec Empire” (2004)
  • The Art of the Motorcycle– an unusual exhibition of commercial art installations of motorcycles.
  • The 2009 retrospective of Frank Lloyd Wright – the museum’s most popular exhibit (since it began keeping such attendance records in 1992), it showcased the architect on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the building.

Dancers in Green and Yellow (1903, pastel and charcoal on tracing paper mounted to paperboard, Edgar Degas)

In The International, a shootout occurs in the museum. A life-size replica of the museum was built for this scene. 

Tableau No. 2, Composition No. VII (1913, Oil on Canvas, Piet Mondrian)

Composition 8 (Piet Mondrian)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: 1071 Fifth Avenue corner East 89th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, NY 10128, USA. Tel: +1 212-423-3500. E-mail: visitorinfo@guggenheim.org. Open 10 AM – 5:45 PM. Admission: US$25 for adults, US$18 for students and seniors (65 years + with valid ID), children below 12 years old is free.