Benjamin Franklin Parkway Classics

Philadelphia City Hall sits at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets, crowned by a thirty-seven-foot bronze statue of William Penn. It remains the largest municipal building in the United States, containing over fourteen acres of…

The massive red steel letters spelling out the word LOVE sit squarely in the middle of JFK Plaza. This sunken urban space was designed by Edmund Bacon in nineteen sixty-five as a grand front door to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. While…

The Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul features a massive brownstone dome that sits perfectly centered against the skyline, modeled after the Lombard churches of Italy. Built in the mid nineteenth century, the cathedral served a…

Logan Square features a central fountain with three bronze figures representing the major rivers of the region: the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and the Susquehanna. Originally called Northwest Square, it served as a burial ground in the…

The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial sits inside a massive rotunda, anchored by a twenty-ton marble statue of Franklin sitting in a chair. Sculptor James Earle Fraser carved the figure from a single block of stone, though he had to…

The Barnes Foundation is a low, limestone-clad building wrapped in a translucent glass canopy that glows from within at night. Albert Barnes, a doctor who made a fortune in pharmaceuticals, spent his life filling his home with Matisse,…

The Rodin Museum features an arched entrance gate modeled after the seventeenth century Chateau d’Issy. Inside the manicured gardens, the bronze cast of The Thinker greets visitors from a pedestal, overseeing a collection that Jules…

Seventy-two stone steps climb from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the grand entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. These steps serve as the final stage of a vast urban planning project that transformed the city's approach to…