St. Augustine Church (Philadelphia)

St. George's United Methodist Church, located at the corner of 4th and New Streets, in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, is the oldest Methodist church in continuous use in the United States, beginning in 1769. The congregation was founded in 1767, meeting initially in a sail loft on Dock Street, and in 1769 it purchased the shell of a building which had been erected in 1763 by a German Reformed congregation. At this time, Methodists had not yet broken away from the Anglican Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church was not founded until 1784.Richard Allen and Absalom Jones became the first African Americans licensed by the Methodist Church. They were licensed by St. George's Church in 1784. Three years later, protesting racial segregation in the worship services, Allen led most of the black members out of St. George's. Allen's camp founded the Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church and the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, while Jones became an Episcopal priest, founding the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas.In the 1920s a court case saved the church from being demolished to make way for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. The case resulted in the bridge being relocated.St. George's has experienced many changes during its 249-year history. From 100 members in 1769, the church grew to a peak membership of 3,200 congregants in 1835. The Civil War and industrialization changed the neighborhood; the congregation was reduced to 25 by 1900. Today the church is an active and vibrant Methodist congregation, tracing its roots back to its founding in 1769. The current pastor of St. George's is Reverend Mark Ignatius Salvacion, J.D. St. George's is one of the more than 500 churches in the Eastern PA Conference of the United Methodist Church (http://www.epaumc.org/). St. George's is committed to a theology of love and inclusion, to personal transformation by faith, and to putting God's love to work in the community – the same core values as the first Methodists who met there. St. George's is also continuing with the ongoing work of reconciliation with African-American brothers and sisters for the racial injustices of the past.

The Boekel Building is a historic factory building located in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 505–515 Vine Street, west of North 5th Street. It was built in 1922–23, and is a six-story, reinforced concrete building clad in brick with terra cotta details. It features massive brick piers and broad banks of windows; the windows were replaced in 1992.The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

The Philadelphia Mint in Philadelphia was created from the need to establish a national identity and the needs of commerce in the United States. This led the Founding Fathers of the United States to make an establishment of a continental national mint, a main priority after the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. The Coinage Act of 1792 was entered into law on April 2. It proclaimed the creation of the United States Mint. Philadelphia at that time was the nation's capital; therefore the first mint facility was built there. The Coinage Act of 1792 also instituted a decimal system based on a dollar unit; specified weights, metallic composition and fineness; and required each United States coin feature "an impression emblematic of liberty".

The Black Banana (formerly La Banane Noire) was a nightclub in Philadelphia.

Cabaret Red Light was a theater group based in Philadelphia that performed vaudeville, burlesque, spoken word and puppet theater, set to original music by The Blazing Cherries. In their first season, between November 2008 and July 2009, Cabaret Red Light staged the series "The Seven Deadly Sins". Their second and third series ("The Experiment", about a cabaret that builds a time machine, and "The Seven Deadly Seas", a pirate and gypsy-jazz show aboard the barquentine Gazela) began in 2010, and they recently performed the premiere of their ballet-and-burlesque version of The Nutcracker based on E. T. A. Hoffmann's original Gothic short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Cabaret Red Light’s shows have been described as a blend of Agitprop and burlesque, an unlikely combination that earned them the title “The Best Marxist Girlie Show in Hell.” In their third show in the Seven Sins series, WRATH!, the group handed out pamphlets announcing the emergence worldwide of “pornographic socialism.” In the finale of their fifth show, GLUTTONY!, they immersed a showgirl (Annie A-Bomb) in liquid chocolate and invited members of the audience to lick it off. When Holly Otterbein of Philadelphia City Paper asked co-director Peter Gaffney about the politics of the show, he responded, "The common ways in which we entertain ourselves — TV, movies, the Internet — involve sitting in a room by yourself. Compare that to the licking scene. It's the opposite. It's real people in a room experimenting with themselves and testing out their own limits." In other interviews, however, Gaffney has denied that Cabaret Red Light has any overtly political agenda. "We think that theater has no business being in politics," he stated in an interview with Emily Orrson of The Daily Pennsylvanian, "and neither does the government."

The Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia was the first government recognized institution established for women's higher education in the United States. Located on Cherry Street, between Third and Fourth Streets, and founded by John Poor on June 4, 1787, it was chartered on January 7, 1792. It provided young women with a diverse curriculum, notably teaching students about various components of English, science, arithmetic, history, and geography.

The Painted Bride Art Center, sometimes referred to informally as The Bride, is a non-profit artist-centered performance space and gallery particularly oriented to presenting the work of local Philadelphia artists, which presents dance, jazz, world, folk and electronic music, visual arts, theatre and performance art, poetry and spoken word performances. It is located at 5212 Market Street in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Painted Bride was founded as a gallery space in an old bridal shop on South Street in 1969 by Gerry Givnish, Sylvia and Larry Konigsberg, Frank Vavricka, A. John Kammer, and Deryl Mackie. Its name derives from a mannequin placed in the shop's window, which became an attraction as people came by to see what provocative outfit it was wearing, or what lewd position it was placed in. In 1973, the gallery gave rise to the Painted Bride Quarterly, a poetry and literary journal. In 1977, having received funding from the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the Bride hired its first paid staff. The six employees worked in all aspects of management. In 1982 it moved to its current location. The Bride, which is part of the National Performance Network includes a 225-seat performance space – the Gerry Givnish Theatre – and has several galleries in which to mount visual arts shows. The New York Times referred to the center as a "wonderful, welcoming and often edgy" venue which "set the trend of cultural activity in Old City" when it was founded.The center receives funding from numerous sources. In 1984, it was the only Philadelphia arts institution to be awarded a $100,000 challenge grant by the National Endowment for the Arts, but by 1996, with Federal grants to the arts diminishing, it received only $10,000, which was $20,000 less than had been budgeted for that performance year. The center also receives funding from the City of Philadelphia and the Pew Charitable Trust.The outside of the former industrial building The Bride is located in is completely covered by Skin of the Bride, a mosaic by Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar, which he created between 1991 and 2000 and donated to the center.In 2020, the Painted Bride organization sold the building to developer Atrium Design Group. They had to go to court in order to sell the building. They refused a $2.65 million offer by the Lantern Theater Company, which would have kept the building as an arts venue.

Museum for Art in Wood is an American educational wood art institution located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was officially established as a nonprofit in 1986 by brothers Albert and Alan LeCoff, following a series of international symposium from 1976-1986 presented by the LeCoff's with woodturner Palmer Sharpless. The organization operated as the Wood Turning Center until 2011, when the nonprofit moved to its current location in Old City District of Philadelphia and changed its name to The Center for Art in Wood. As of January 30, 2023 the Center has changed ita name to Museum for Art in Wood. Today, the Museum presents changing exhibitions of contemporary art work in the medium of wood, a permanent collection of over 1,000 pieces and a host of educational programs and workshops. The Museum also houses a research library, artists files, and a museum store. A series of publications documents the Museum's work and highlights premier artists working in the field of wood turning and art in wood.

Girard Fountain Park is a 0.15-acre (610 m2) pocket park in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, at 325 Arch Street. It is open to the public during daylight hours and is maintained by local volunteers now incorporated as d.b.a. Old City Green.The park was created in the mid-1960s after the demolition of four 3- and 4-story commercial buildings that had stood on the northeast corner of 4th and Arch Streets. A firehouse was built on the corner lots, while the lot formerly occupied by 325 Arch was cleared.The park was improved following the 1976 grant of money from a city-held fund established by banker Stephen Girard (1750–1831) to improve areas near the Delaware River.In 1971, a sculpture of Benjamin Franklin by local sculptor Reginald E. Beauchamp was installed atop the park's front wall. It was made of acrylic and covered with almost 80,000 pennies collected from local schoolchildren, and it incorporated a device that delivered a recorded two-minute speech on fire prevention at the push of a button. Penny Franklin was unveiled on June 10, 1971, by U.S. Mint Director Mary Brooks. Over the next two decades, the sculpture, also known as Penny Benny, became "one of the city's best-known landmarks." But it eventually deteriorated and became a potential hazard. For a while, the sculpture was kept from tumbling onto the sidewalk by ropes rigged by the firefighters from the firehouse next door. In 1996, it was removed to city storage.In 2003, the city's public arts agency commissioned sculptor James Peniston to replace the older work. Peniston sculpted a bust of Franklin in bronze and covered it with casts of 1,000 keys collected from local schoolchildren. Called Keys To Community, the one-ton sculpture also contains several brass nameplates representing Philadelphia firefighters fallen in the line of duty over four centuries. The sculpture was partially funded by the Fire Department and by more than 1.5 million pennies donated by schoolchildren in 500 area schools. It was unveiled and dedicated on October 5, 2007.The park itself had fallen into disrepair by the mid-1990s, and its gate was generally kept locked by the Fire Department. But a restoration effort, begun in summer of 2006 led by Old City residents Janet Kalter and Joe Schiavo, brought the park back into public use. In the wake of the sculpture's dedication, Fire Department officials consented to restoration work on the fountain. The work began in June 2008 and the fountain was restored to operation in August. The Fire Department formally returned the fountain to service in a Nov. 1 ceremony. Kalter and Schiavo, now incorporated as d.b.a. Old City Green, have continued to propose and execute major improvement projects, minor upgrades, and maintain the park on a daily basis. In 2016, with financial assistance provided by Old City District, Old City Green replaced all the aging park furniture and seating area pavers, upgraded the fountain filtration and chlorination systems, and altered the park entrance walls and gate to present a more welcoming appearance. In 2019, Old City Green proposed, funded, and executed a redesign of the north section of the park, expanding the garden perimeter, installing a central raised-planter feature, three new bench locations, and replaced the (unsustainable) lawn with a deep-bed crushed brick surface. In 2019, a mural, depicting the history of organized firefighting in Philadelphia and founding of the Philadelphia Fire Department and subsequent supporting organizations, was installed on the east wall of the park. The mural, designed by Eric Okdeh, was a partnership project of Mural Arts Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Fire Department, the PFD Family Association, and WAWA.

James Peniston (born 1973) is an American sculptor whose monumental works in bronze include Gregor Mendel (1998), Keys To Community (2007), and American Pharoah (2017). Peniston worked on the 2004 National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., for which he helped design the stainless-steel armature that holds up the bronze eagles and wreaths under the Atlantic and Pacific arches.Peniston is also a cofounder and arts director of Studio 34: Yoga Healing Arts, a yoga and creative arts center in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Franklin Square station is an unused, underground rapid transit station on the PATCO Speedline, operated by the Delaware River Port Authority. It is located under Franklin Square in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Opened on June 7, 1936, the station was the first westbound and final eastbound station in Philadelphia, located just west of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge which carries trains over the Delaware River. The station has been opened for four separate intervals, each time eventually being closed for low ridership. The station is currently being refurbished and is expected to open once again in April 2024.

The National Constitution Center is a non-profit institution devoted to the Constitution of the United States. On Independence Mall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the center is an interactive museum and a national town hall for constitutional dialogue, hosting government leaders, journalists, scholars, and celebrities for public discussions (including presidential debates). The center offers civic learning resources onsite and online. It does not house the original Constitution, which is stored at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. The groundbreaking ceremony was held on September 17, 2000, the 213th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. The center opened on July 4, 2003, joining other historic sites and attractions in what has been called "America's most historic square mile" because of its proximity to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.