By Drew Lipman

This summer, I’m going to be posting on history attractions in Old City. I’ll share my perspective both as an historian-in-training and as a guide who has led dozens of walking tours around Philadelphia. I’d like to begin my stint here the same way most visits to Philadelphia begin, with a look at maps.

Forget the awkward un-folding and re-folding; these maps are already laid out for you. They are all scale models of the city where you can indulge your inner Godzilla and stomp around the streets (don’t worry, there are no power lines to trip you up).

Let’s begin in Welcome Park, an unassuming little open space on 2nd Street between Chestnut and Walnut. The ground of the park is a stonework recreation of the original map that William Penn used as the master plan for Philadelphia. This 1682 map, known as the Holmes Plan, laid out the basic framework for Center City; a one-by-two mile rectangle divided into four quadrants by Market (then-called High Street) and Broad. The Plan feature five open squares, one in the center and one in each quadrant, which we now know as Washington, Rittenhouse, Logan, Franklin, and City Hall Squares. The park-like squares are represent by single trees, while City Hall is marked by a statue of William Penn standing on an oversized pedestal.

The rest of the park also pays tribute to the colony’s Quaker founder. In fact, Welcome Park derives its name from the ship The Welcome that carried Penn to the Delaware, and it’s located on the approximate site of the home where Penn’s family lived in the city’s early years. (A handsome model of the house stands in its correct place on the plan.) The timeline on the south side of the park chronicles the life of the colony and its founder, which helps to orient new visitors in time as well as space.

You’ll find another map on the first floor of the Atwater Kent Museum on 7th Street just south of Market. Here in the city’s official history museum, the floor of an entire room is lined with a full-color modern map of Philadelphia. You can see how Penn’s plan persists and see how it has been altered and reinvented as the city grew far beyond its original designated rectangle. (Locals often enjoy finding their houses and neighborhoods on the map.) For reasons I can’t quite explain, walking around this giant map is somehow vastly more satisfying than looking at a paper one.

Finally, while it isn’t exactly a map, the Philadelphia-themed mini-golf course at Franklin Square serves the same purpose as the other two: it reduces a sprawling American city to a walkable miniature. You can walk through a scaled-down version of Elfreth’s Alley, hit a shot across the Ben Franklin Bridge or up the Art Museum steps. Just be careful not to land your ball in the waters of the mini-Delaware or the mini-Schuylkill, which are found, appropriately enough, on the east and west sides of the course.

Want some more info on exploring Historic Philadelphia? Sure you do. Visit www.gophila.com/history for a plethora of places to see and things to do.

Historic Philadelphia
www.gophila.com/history