Philadelphia also known colloquially as Philly
Philadelphia, also known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. State of Pennsylvania. It is located on the Eastern Bank of the Delaware River — shortly before its mouth in Delaware Bay — , which separates it from the state of New Jersey, and at an intermediate point between the important cities of New York and Washington D.C. It is the fifth city in the country by population and the 51.World. Philadelphia county, of which it is home, has 1,526,000 habs. (Philadelphia City) and its metropolitan area (Delaware Valley) reaches 6 million habs. (2014 census).
It is a major historic, cultural and artistic center in the United States, and in the same way an important industrial port on the Delaware River, which extends to the Atlantic Ocean. Founded in 1682, it was during the eighteenth century the most populous city of the Thirteen Colonies and the third most populous city of the British Empire (after London and Dublin), before becoming temporarily the capital city of the United States. It was quickly overtaken by New York and ceded its capital status to the brand-new city of Washington D.C. Today, Philadelphia is the main metropolis of the state of Pennsylvania, although the capital and seat of government is Harrisburg.
The name of the city, chosen by William Penn, means” the city of Brotherly Love “(composed of philos (φίλος)” love”, and adelphos (adelδελφός)” brother”), as it was intended to be a refuge of religious tolerance.
Established in 1682, it is one of the oldest cities in the country, and, as the original capital and largest city of the colonial era, enjoyed greater political and social importance than Boston or New York. In 1776, The Continental Congress of the thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia and on July 4 of that year, declared independence from Britain. Perhaps the most famous citizen of Philadelphia was Benjamin Franklin, a writer, scientist and politician.
Philadelphia is central to African American history, its large black population predates the Great Migration.
History
The beginnings of Philadelphia
The Treaty of Penn with the Indians.4 this poster represents the signing of the peace treaty between the natives and William Penn, at Shackmaxon.
Before the arrival of the English, nearly 20,000 Lenape Amerindians, belonging to the Algonquin nation, inhabited the Delaware Valley and the settlement of Shackmaxon.
Exploration of the Delaware Valley took place in the early seventeenth century. The first settlers claimed the entire riverbank and sought to expand their influence by creating an agricultural and fur trading colony to avoid French and British traders. The first Swedish expedition to North America sailed from the Port of Gothenburg in 1637. It was organized and planned by Clas Fleming, a Swedish admiral from Finland. Part of this colony, called New Sweden, included territories from the west coast of the Delaware River to just below the Schuylkill River, in other words, New Jersey, present-day Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.
New Sweden, founded in 1638, was annexed to The New Netherlands in 1655. The region finally passed to British rule in 1674.
In 1681, King Charles II of England granted a letter of authorization to William Penn in exchange for the cancellation of a debt the government owed to his father. By this document, the colony of Pennsylvania was officially founded. William Penn (1644–1718) was an English Quaker: he belonged to this dissident religious group suffering persecution in England, which rejected the ecclesiastical hierarchy and proclaimed equality, tolerance and peace. Therefore, Pennsylvania quickly became a place of refuge for all those oppressed by professing this faith. William Penn moved from England to America in 1682 and founded the city of Philadelphia. He made sure that this city served as a port and political center. Although Charles II had already given him the land, William Penn also bought the land from its rightful owners, the Amerindians, in order to establish peaceful relations with them. He reportedly signed a treaty of friendship with lenape Chief Tamanend at Shackmaxon in 1682.
Elfreth’s Alley, street inhabited since 1713.
Philadelphia was designed according to a checkerboard plan, the oldest in the United States, with wide streets and five parks. Willliam Penn wanted, above all, to make this city a city of God, guaranteeing freedom of worship. The name of the city, in Greek Φιλαδέλφια (“ Brotherly Love “), reflected this ambition. When William Penn returned from England to Philadelphia in 1699, after a fifteen-year absence, he found a much larger city that was just behind Boston in terms of population. Numerous European immigrants, English, Dutch, French Protestants, had arrived, attracted by the prosperity of the city and its religious tolerance. A first group of Germans settled in 1683 in the present-day neighborhood of Germantown. Willliam Penn granted a charter to the city on October 25, 1701 to create municipal institutions: a town hall, councils, and an assembly.
By the second half of the eighteenth century, Philadelphia had become the most populous city of the Thirteen Colonies (14,000 inhabitants in 1780) and surpassed even Boston. He also contested Dublin for the position of second city of the British Empire.
A center of lights
The Pennsylvania Gazette.
At the end of the 18th century, Philadelphia was the “legitimate center of revolutionary ideas”, notably under the impetus of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790). This scholar, born in Boston, arrived in Philadelphia in 1723 and was one of the founders of the Library Company of Philadelphia (1731), the University of Pennsylvania (1740) and the American Society of Philosophy (1743). In 1752, he invented the lightning rod. In 1728 John Bartram created a botanical garden, the first of its kind in North America. It was also in the eighteenth century that Philadelphia became the main publishing center of the Thirteen Colonies: the first newspaper, The American Weekly Mercury, appeared in 1719. The Pennsylvania Gazette (1723) played an important role during the American Revolution. In 1739 the first anti-slavery treaty was published and the city became, along with Boston, one of the abolitionist centers of the country.
Knowledge and culture experienced an important development in the eighteenth century, so much so that the city was sometimes referred to as “the Athens of North America”. In the 1760s a school of anatomy was opened, a medical school in 1765 and, the following year, a company and a permanent theater. In 1790, the University of Pennsylvania School of Law opened, the oldest law school in the United States. Many artists of the city founded in 1794 the Columbianum, which was then the first Society for the promotion of Fine Arts.
Finally, Philadelphia was endowed with equipment, Public tools and urban infrastructure before other American cities, especially under the impulse of Benjamin Franklin: a hospital and a fire company in the 1730s and many banks were founded in the 1780s. The Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), the seat of the colonial Assembly, was built in 1753. The streets were progressively paved and illuminated with gas lamps.
The American Revolution
The First Continental Congress was held in Carpenters’ Hall in 1774.
In the 1770s, Philadelphia became one of the main centers of the American Revolution. The Sons of Liberty, an organization of American Patriots, were very active in the city: they resisted the fiscal measures imposed by the city and incited the settlers to boycott English goods.
Philadelphia was chosen, because of its central position within the Thirteen Colonies, to host the first continental Congress that met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters’ Hall. The Second continental Congress lasted from 1775 to 1781, the date of the Declaration of independence and the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. During the war of independence, this assembly organized the continental Army, issued paper money and took care of the country’s international relations. The delegates signed the Declaration of independence on July 4, 1776 in this city. However, in response to the American defeat of Brandywine in 1777, Congress had to leave the city, as well as 2/3 of the population. The inhabitants had to hide the Freedom Bell.
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