JUST YESTERDAY

Benjamin Franklin landed right here on the shores of the Delaware River, having taken a packet boat from northern New Jersey, the last leg of his trip from Boston, where he had fled an apprenticeship at his brother's printshop. It seems he landed somewhere around Market Street and he remarks in his biography on the view of the Christ's Church steeple, still a landmark three blocks in from the riverfront, although in Franklin's day much closer to it. As Philadelphia grew inland from the Delaware River, the construction debris was dumped into the river, extending the city by about two handred yards into the river. Front Street was once the riverfront and the landfill debris now supports a six lane highway (InterState 95) plus a four lane road (Delaware Avenue) plus various waterfront developments, condos and piers. Franklin would be hard-pressed to point out exactly where he stepped ashore.
Some two hundred years before Franklin, William Penn's landing in Philadelphia is commemorated today by the Penn Treaty Park, where he is said to have signed a peace agreement with a tribe of the local natives. The park is located about a half mile north of where Franklin landed. But the park, like the modern waterfront developments, rests on landfill accumulated over the ensuing centuries and, while Penn may have signed his treaty waterside, he was assuredly not in this park.
Although neither Penn nor Franklin would recognize the riverfront of Philadelphia today, much of the city's charm lies in just how much a colonial resident would find familiar. Franklin could easily trace his path up Chestnut Street to Independence Hall and back down Second Street to City Tavern where the framers of the Constitution dined after their debates in that hot summer of 1776. Today, you can order the same food from the same menu in the same room where they ate. He would recognize the bronze plaques on the fronts of houses showing four interlocking wrists because his fire company insured those houses and put those plaques there. And he would note those houses that have lightening rods on their roof, an invention that stemmed from his kite-flying experiments.
To Franklin, it might seem like only yesterday.