Center City: William Penn's Three-Hundred-Forty-Three-Year Experiment

Best Time to Visit

Spring and early fall are the easiest months on the corridor. Late April through early June, the corner squares are in full leaf and Rittenhouse runs cool under its tree canopy; mid-September through late October, the same trees turn and the light at Logan Square in the afternoon is the clearest of the year for reading the Penn statue six blocks back down the Parkway. Summer days are humid and the City Hall plaza is exposed, but the early evening from about six o'clock onward is one of the best times to read the masonry tower against a softer sky. Winter mornings are uncrowded; January and February read the grid cleanly with the trees bare, and the seam between Penn's seventeenth-century plan and the twentieth-century skyscrapers along North Broad is most legible without summer foliage. Weekday mornings before about ten are the quietest at City Hall and on the Walnut Street walk between Rittenhouse and Washington. The Reading Terminal Market is busiest between eleven and two; arrive before eleven or after two if you want room to walk the aisles.

Pro Tips

• •Stop One reads best from the south plaza of City Hall, where you can see the full height of the tower and the Penn statue at the top in a single sightline. The four entrance arches under the building are open during weekday business hours; if you have time, walk through the central courtyard once before continuing to Stop Two.
• •The Stop Two intersection of Broad and Market is one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in Philadelphia. The corner where the audio asks you to stand is most workable as one of the four corners under the City Hall arches, where you have room to read all four cardinal directions without standing in traffic.
• •Stop Three, Rittenhouse Square, is dog-friendly and busy on weekends. The reflecting pool at the center is the cleanest single anchor for reading the square's geometry; the diagonal paths from Cret and Olmsted Jr.'s early-twentieth-century redesign converge near it.
• •Stop Four, Washington Square, is the quietest of the three squares on the corridor. Walk a slow circuit around the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier and read the inscriptions before continuing. The seventeen-ninety-three yellow-fever framing in the audio lands more clearly if you have stood on the lawn for a minute.
• •Stop Five, the Reading Terminal Market, is at its commercial peak between eleven in the morning and two in the afternoon. The audio reads the market as a building and a continuous use; if you want lunch from one of the counters, plan that as a sit-down after the audio finishes rather than mid-stop.
• •Stop Six reads the PSFS Building from the south side of Market Street, looking up at the rooftop sign and the ribbon windows. The interior of the building operates as the Loews Philadelphia Hotel and is publicly accessible at the lobby; the second-floor banking hall is one of the most-preserved Modernist interiors of the period if you have time to look inside.
• •Stop Seven, the Wanamaker Building, reads its interior best during the daily organ performances at noon and around five in the afternoon, six days a week. If your walk timing lets you arrive at noon, plan a few minutes in the Grand Court to hear the organ. The bronze eagle in the court center is the city's most-cited meeting place; the Meet me at the Eagle phrase is still in everyday use.
• •Stop Eight, Logan Square, reads the Parkway sightline back to City Hall most cleanly from the south side of the Swann Fountain, where the alignment between the fountain's central jet and the Penn statue six blocks east is direct. Late afternoon light brings out the bronze figures' detail.