Philadelphia PA Tourism and Sightseeing

While the yellow fever epidemic raged in Philadelphia in 1793, business of the new republic continued at the Germantown "White House" Here, President Washington presided over meetings with his divided cabinet: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox and Edmund Randolph. The president returned with his family to spend the following summer in Germantown's pleasant surroundings.

More recently, the Morris family lived here for over one hundred years, donating it to the National Park Service in 1948. Now a unit of Independence National Historical Park, guided tours of the Germantown "White House" offers a glimpse into the private world of our first president.

Thus the narrator begins to confess to murdering his wife in The Black Cat, just one of many fascinating creations from short story master and poet, Edgar Allan Poe.

Exploring themes as diverse as spirituality, astronomy, science and depravity, Poes writing is as powerful and arresting today as when he was first published. Poes 6 years in Philadelphia, 1838-1844, were his most productive. Not only did Poe edit and provide critical reviews for very successful magazines, but he also invented the modern detective story. While in Philadelphia, Poe penned such classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher and poems like The Haunted Palace and To Helen.

While living in Philadelphia, Poe went from the high of being a popular lecturer to the despair of learning that his wife Virginia was ill with tuberculosis. The brief and tragic life of the author, his times, and literary legacy are interpreted in the building that once sheltered Poe and his family.

Imagine the transformationtown becomes citythirteen colonies become one nation... Lutheran GLORIA DEI becomes Episcopalian The tiny church was almost lost in the nearly endless sea of tall masts standing shoulder to shoulder along a busy waterfront only yards away. The sound of a thousand hammers beating against nail and wood could be heard as new ships rose on the waterfront; modest middle class houses and shops rise opposite where there was once field and forest.

Affectionately referred to as OLD SWEDES, the memory of the long-vanished Swedish settlers is not forgotten. Now imagine OLD SWEDES in the modern worldan oasis surrounded by a sea of concrete and steel Stroll among its cemeterys weatherworn tombstones to re-discover Patriots and ordinary citizens buried side by side so long ago. Enter the tiny church and feel three hundred years of history welcoming you.

Thaddeus Kosciuszko was one of the first European volunteers to aid the American revolutionary cause in 1776. A brilliant Polish military engineer, Kosciuszko designed and constructed fortifications to help defeat the British, most notably at Saratoga and West Point in New York. Kosciuszko returned to Poland and led his own countrymen in a failed attempt to free them from foreign oppression. Seriously wounded in battle and imprisoned in Czarist Russia, upon his release, he returned to the United States. In a small rented room on the second floor of this house, Kosciuszko spent the winter of 1797-98 reading, sketching and receiving distinguished visitors like Vice-President Thomas Jefferson.

Of all the places associated with the American War for Independence, perhaps none has come to symbolize perseverance and sacrifice more than Valley Forge. The hardships of the encampment claimed the lives of one in ten, nearly all from disease. Despite the privations suffered by the army at Valley Forge, Washington and his generals built a unified professional military organization that ultimately enabled the Continental Army to triumph over the British.

Perhaps one of Washingtons soldiers said it best when he described his reasons for not abandoning the field despite the harsh conditions: "We had engaged in the defense of our wounded country and . . . we were determined to persevere." Private Joseph Plumb Martin, 8th Connecticut regiment, December 1777.