Christ Church

religious

The white wooden steeple of Christ Church rises two hundred feet above Second Street, topped by a bright, gilded weathercock. This building replaced a smaller brick structure in seventeen twenty-seven, serving the prominent families of colonial Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin held a pew here, and while the revolutionary delegates debated independence a few blocks away, the rector of this parish famously stopped praying for the King of England. The congregation simply crossed out the monarch’s name in the prayer books.

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