added to its park system in 1891; in it is the stone house, with
ivy-covered walls, which the famous botanist built with his own hands.
Through the efforts of the City Park Association, organized in 1888, a number of outlying parks, connecting parkways and small triangular or circular parks, have been placed on the city plan. Among these are League Island Park (300 acres), opposite the United States navy yard on League Island; Penny Pack Creek Park (about 1200 acres), extending 6½ m. along Penny Pack Creek, in the north-east; Cobb's Creek Park, extending about 4 m. along the western border; Fairmount Parkway, 300 ft. wide on a direct line south-east from Fairmount Park to Logan Square and somewhat narrower from Logan Square to the city-hall; and Torresdale Parkway (300 ft. wide and 10½ m. long), from Hunting Park, 4½ m. north of the city-hall, along a direct line north-east to the city limits. A plaza at the intersection of Broad and Johnson streets, radiating streets therefrom, and the widening of Broad Street to 300 ft. from this plaza to League Island Park are also on the city plan. Laurel Hill cemetery, on a high bank of the Schuylkill and contiguous to Fairmount Park, is the city's principal burying ground; in it are the tombs of Dr Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, and Major-General Meade.
Theatres.—The first Shakespearean performance in the United States was probably at Philadelphia in 1749; another company played there in 1754 and 1759; and in 1766 was built the Old Southwark theatre, in which Major John André and Captain John Peter De Lancey acted during the British occupation of the city, and which after twenty years of illegal existence was opened “by authority” in 1789. The Walnut Street theatre (1808) is said to be the oldest play-house in the United States. Other theatres are the Garrick, the large Academy of Music, the Chestnut Street opera house, the Lyric, the Adelphi, the Park and the German.
Clubs.—Among social clubs are the Union League, the University (1881), the Philadelphia, the City, the Markham, the Manufacturers (1887), the Rittenhouse, the Lawyers, the Clover, the Pen and Pencil, the Art, the Mercantile, several country clubs and athletic clubs (notably the Racket), and the foremost cricket clubs in the United States, the Belmont, the Philadelphia, the Keystone, the Merion (at Haverford), and the Germantown (at Manheim).
Museums, Learned Societies and Libraries.—In the southern part of Fairmount Park is a zoological garden with an excellent collection. Its site is the former estate of John Penn, grandson of William Penn. The collection is an outgrowth of the museum, the first in the United States, opened by Charles Willson Peale in Independence Hall in 1802. It is now owned by the Zoological Society (incorporated in 1859) and was opened in 1874. Other museums in Fairmount Park are: the botanical collection in horticultural hall; and in memorial hall the general art collections of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts and the Wilstach collection of paintings (about 500), including examples of the Italian schools from the 15th to the 17th centuries and of modern French and American painters. Bartram's botanical garden, mentioned above as a city park, was established in 1728 by John Bartram (1699-1777) and is the oldest botanical garden in America. The Philadelphia Commercial Museums, founded in 1894, is a notable institution for promoting the foreign commerce of the United States, having a collection of raw materials and manufactured products from all countries, a laboratory and a library. The institution investigates trade conditions and the requirements of markets in all parts of the world, maintains a bureau of information, issues a weekly bulletin for American exporters and a monthly publication for foreign buyers, and has published several “foreign commercial guides” and other commercial works. The museum is maintained chiefly by municipal appropriations and by fees. Its control is vested in “The Board of Trustees of the Philadelphia Museums,” composed of fourteen citizens of Philadelphia chosen for life and eight ex officio members who are the incumbents of the leading state and municipal offices. There are home and foreign advisory boards, and the immediate management is under a director. In 1727 Franklin, then in his twenty-second year, formed most of his “ingenious acquaintance into a club,” which he called the Junto, “for mutual improvement,” and out of the Junto grew in 1731 the library of the Library Company of Philadelphia, which he spoke of as the “mother of all North American subscription libraries,” but which was not the first subscription library in North America. The Library Company of Philadelphia absorbed in 1769 the Union Library, which had been founded some years before; and in 1792 the Loganian library, a valuable collection of classical and other works provided for under the will of James Logan, a friend of Penn, was transferred to it. Subsequently it acquired by bequest the libraries of the Rev. Samuel Preston of London and of William Mackenzie of Philadelphia. Among the rarities in the latter was a copy of Caxton's Golden Legend (1486). In 1869 the Library Company was made the beneficiary, under the will of Dr James Rush (1786-1869), of an estate valued at about a million dollars, and with this money the Ridgway branch was established in 1878. The library has owned its building since 1790; the building on the present site was opened in 1880 and was enlarged in 1889.
The American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin in 1743, is the oldest and the most famous academy of science in America. Its organization was the immediate consequence of a circular by Franklin entitled, A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America. In 1769 it united with (and officially took the name of) “The American Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge.” Among its early presidents were Franklin, Rittenhouse and Jefferson. It has a valuable library—about 50,000 vols.—containing the great mass of the correspondence of Franklin; here, too, are many interesting relics, among them the chair in which Jefferson sat while writing, the Declaration of Independence and an autograph copy of the Declaration. The society has published 27 quarto vols. of Transactions (1771-1908); its Proceedings have been published regularly since 1838, and in 1884 those from 1744 to 1838, compiled from the manuscript minutes, were also published. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, founded in 1812, has been noted for its collection of birds since it acquired, in 1846, the collection of the duc de Rivoli numbering more than 12,000 specimens; several smaller collections have since been added. The academy has a notable collection of shells and fossils and the “types” of Leidy, Cope, Say, Conrad and other naturalists, and a library. It is composed of the following “sections”: biological and microscopical (1868), entomological (1876), botanical (1876), mineralogical and geological (1877) and ornithological (1891). It has published a Journal since 1817 and its Proceedings since 1841, and periodicals on entomology, conchology and ornithology. To a few young men and women it gives training in scientific investigation without charge. The Pennsylvania Historical Society, organized in 1824, has a valuable collection of historical material, including the papers of the Penn family and the Charlemagne Tower collection of American colonial laws, and many early American printed handbills and books (especially of Bradford, Franklin and Christopher Saur), portraits and relics. With the proceeds of the society's publication fund the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography has been published since 1877. The Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, organized in 1858, is the oldest numismatic organization in the United States; it has a collection of coins, and since 1865 it has published its Proceedings. The College of Physicians and Surgeons has an excellent medical library. The free library of Philadelphia (established 1891) includes a main library and several branches. Other important libraries are that of the university of Pennsylvania, the Mercantile, that of Franklin Institute, that of the Law Association of Philadelphia, the Athenæum, that of the German Society of Pennsylvania, and Apprentices'. The free museum of science and art of the university of Pennsylvania has valuable archaeological collections, notably the American and the Babylonian collections made by university expeditions.
Schools.—William Penn in his frame of government provided for a committee of manners, education and art. The assembly, in March 1683, passed an act which provided that all children should be taught to read and write by the time they were twelve years of age, that then they should be taught some useful trade, and that for every child not so taught the parent or guardian should be fined five pounds. At a meeting of the provincial council held in Philadelphia in 1683 the governor and council appointed as schoolmaster, Enoch Flower, who for twenty years had held that position in England. But schools were left almost wholly to private initiative until 1818. The first grammar school, commonly known in its early years as the Friends' free school, was established in 1689 under the care of the celebrated George Keith; although maintained by the Friends it was open to all, and for more than sixty years was the only public place for free instruction in the province. It was chartered by Penn in 1701, 1708 and 1711, in time became known as the William Penn Charter School, and is still a secondary school on Twelfth Street. In 1740 a building was erected for a “charity school” and for a “house of worship,” but the school had not been opened when, in 1749, Franklin published his Proposals relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania. Under the influence of this publication a new educational association was formed which purchased the building and in January 1751 opened in it an institution that was chartered as an “academy and charitable school” in 1753, was rechartered as a college and academy in 1755, and became the university of Pennsylvania by act of the state legislature passed in 1791. The university occupied the site of the present post office from 1802 until 1872, but was then removed to grounds near the western bank of the Schuylkill.
The foundation of the present public school system was laid in 1818 by an act of the legislature which constituted the city and county of Philadelphia the first school district of Pennsylvania and provided for the establishment therein of free schools for indigent orphans and the children of indigent parents; the same act authorized the establishment of a model school for the training of teachers, which was the pioneer school for this purpose in America. In 1834 free elementary schools were authorized for all children of school age, and since then the system has developed until it embraces the Central High School for boys, which has a semi-collegiate course with a department of pedagogy and confers the degrees of B.A. and B.S.; a Normal High School for girls, into which the model school was converted in 1848, in which most of the teachers of the city are trained and which only graduates of the Girls' High School are permitted to enter; the William Penn High School for girls (opened 1909) with academic, commercial, applied arts,
