It’s obvi­ous that the Cen­ter is just a hold­ing pen for big bus trips. It’s not as much a muse­um or nation­al shrine as it is a high­way rest stop. On your left­’s the super-sized cafe­te­ria, on your right the store for crap­py hats and t‑shirts. And for this we rip up Philadelphia?

So today my moth­er and I decid­ed to walk over and see the new Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter on Inde­pen­dence Mall. It’s open­ing day was a bit famous for a large prop crash­ing down on the heads of the assem­bled dig­ni­taries and we want­ed to see if the Cen­ter itself lived up to such an aus­pi­cious start.
It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­mal walk from the main down­town part of Philadel­phia to Inde­pen­dence Mall. For those of you who don’t know the city or the his­to­ry, whole neigh­bor­hoods were razed in the 1950s to cre­ate a park-like atmos­phere with long vis­tas gaz­ing onto the old state house where the U.S. Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and Con­sti­tu­tion were both draft­ed and signed (it was­n’t until much lat­er that the attrac­tive but unas­sum­ing brick build­ing was renamed “Inde­pen­dence Hall”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Hall). This was a thriv­ing area with lots of funky nine­teenth cen­tu­ry build­ings, some of them of archi­tec­tur­al inter­est, and if they had been left stand­ing the build­ings and loca­tion would have made this one of the most excit­ing and hap­pen­ing neigh­bor­hoods of Philly. Instead it’s all asphalt park­ing lots and over­sized insti­tu­tion­al build­ings. Lived his­to­ry was ripped out to make room for a pre-packaged “His­to­ry” that nev­er was. It would have been much eas­i­er to imag­ine the bus­tle and hum of the 1776 streets of Philadel­phia if they were still lived-in and thriv­ing, but adven­tur­ous tourists have to walk a half mile west into Chi­na­town to get a taste of the chaos of real city life, now and then.
The “Mall” con­cept sur­round Inde­pen­dence Hall has always been a big flop. Grand vis­tas became long and sketchy parks which you did­n’t want to vis­it after dark, filled with foun­tains where few kids ever wad­ed. It’s large­ly because of the fail­ure of the past rip-it/flatten-it/sod-it men­tal­i­ty that the new Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter was built. It’s nicer than the bar­ren­ness that was there, but it’s still a giant pavil­lion air-dropped in the crater of what was a city, the whole thing sur­round­ed with over­sized insti­tu­tion­al office box­es (the concrete-barricaded fed­er­al build­ing and mint, a few TV stu­dios). There’s lit­tle real con­nec­tion to the vibrant city a few blocks away. (It’s like near­by Atlantic City, anoth­er real city that was turned inside-out to mar­ket to tourists, who are now brought in on air-conditioned bus­es and deposit­ed direct­ly onto the win­dow­less casi­no floors, nev­er to know there’s a real city outside.)
When my moth­er and I walked along the entry way to the Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter we gazed into the win­dows to get a sense of what we were about to see. All we saw in there was a gener­ic cafe­te­ria. We should have got­ten the hint but we car­ried along inside any­way. After being checked by secu­ri­ty we walked into the Cen­ter to find… nothing.
It’s emp­ty. The most promi­nent fea­ture upon enter­ing is the list of cor­po­rate spon­sors. Then there are the audi­to­ri­ums arranged around the cen­tral hall, all named after bene­fac­tors like Wal­ter Annen­berg. My moth­er and I sort of piroet­ted around the main area try­ing to fig­ure out where to go. There was a curv­ing stair­case wel­com­ing us to the sec­ond floor so we walked up. There we saw a emp­ty bal­cony. We glanced right and final­ly found some­thing – a room with life-sized bronze stat­ues of the found­ing fathers. Cheesy and kind of stu­pid but we’re here so we walk in.
Bad idea. Some young staff per­son rush­es up to us and says we can’t go in. We need tick­ets to go in there. Tick­ets are sold down­stairs. We can’t see a stat­ue of Thomas Jef­fer­son with­out pay­ing $6. Here we are in a fed­er­al muse­um plas­tered in cor­po­rate names and we have to _pay_ to see some _statues_? We turn to walk around the long bal­cony to see if there’s any­thing in the non-ticketed area on the oth­er side. It’s only a sec­ond entrance to the stat­ues. The young woman rush­es up to us to tell us we can’t go in that way either, we need the tick­ets, etc., etc. I ask one of the oth­er staffers if there’s any­thing here worth see­ing that does­n’t need a tick­et but he has no answer. Sigh…
We do find some­thing free how­ev­er. As we walked out we noticed that the gift shop is free. Thank you Uncle Sam.
It’s obvi­ous that the Cen­ter is just a hold­ing pen for big bus trips. It’s not as much a muse­um or nation­al shrine as it is a high­way rest stop. On your left­’s the super-sized cafe­te­ria, on your right the store for crap­py hats and t‑shirts. And for this we rip up Philadelphia?
Fur­ther reading:
Trav­els in Philadel­phia by Christo­pher Mor­ley. Mor­ley’s more known for the vignettes he wrote of New York City life in the 1920s, but he start­ed out in Philadel­phia. He had an eye for see­ing the col­or­ful explo­sion of life being lived where politi­cians saw noth­ing but ten­e­ments and flop-houses. Some of the neigh­bor­hoods he pro­filed so lov­ing­ly are under­neath the sod and asphalt of Inde­pen­dence Mall and the near­by interstates.
(Per­son­al note: my great-grandfather owned and man­aged a hotel in the area back in the late 1800s. I once got the street num­ber and tracked it down, only to find an offramp for the Vine Street Express­way. So much for fam­i­ly his­to­ry. So much for Philly history.)