"Philly" redirects here. For other uses, see Philly (disambiguation) and Philadelphia (disambiguation).
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Philadelphia |
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| City of Philadelphia | |
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Skyline of Center City
Liberty Bell with Independence Hall in the background
University of Pennsylvania campus in University City
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Seal 
Logo |
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| Etymology: Ancient Greek: φίλος phílos (beloved, dear) and ἀδελφός adelphós (brother, brotherly) ———-——— |
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| Nickname(s):
"Philly", "The City of Brotherly Love", “America’s Garden Capital”,[1] "The Athens of America",[2] and other nicknames of Philadelphia |
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| Motto:
"Philadelphia maneto" ("Let brotherly love endure" or "... continue")[3][4] |
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Interactive maps of Philadelphia |
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Coordinates:  39°57′10″N 75°09′49″WCoordinates: 39°57′10″N 75°09′49″W |
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| Country | United States |
| State | Pennsylvania |
| County | Philadelphia |
| Historic countries | Kingdom of England Kingdom of Great Britain |
| Historic colony | Province of Pennsylvania |
| Founded | 1682[5] |
| Incorporated | October 25, 1701 |
| Founded by | William Penn |
| Government | |
| • Type | Mayor–council, consolidated city-county |
| • Body | Philadelphia City Council |
| • Mayor | Jim Kenney (D) |
| Area | |
| • Consolidated city-county | 142.70 sq mi (369.59 km2) |
| • Land | 134.36 sq mi (347.98 km2) |
| • Water | 8.34 sq mi (21.61 km2) |
| Elevation | 39 ft (12 m) |
| Population | |
| • Consolidated city-county | 1,603,797 |
| • Estimate
(2021)[8] |
1,576,251 |
| • Rank | 6th in the United States 1st in Pennsylvania |
| • Density | 11,936.92/sq mi (4,608.86/km2) |
| • Urban | 5,696,125 (US: 7th) |
| • Urban density | 3,000.8/sq mi (1,158.6/km2) |
| • Metro | 6,245,051 (US: 7th) |
| Demonym | Philadelphian |
| Time zone | UTC−5 (EST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC−4 (EDT) |
| ZIP Codes |
19092–19093, 19099, 191xx |
| Area codes | 215, 267, 445 |
| FIPS code | 42-60000 |
| GNIS feature ID | 1215531[11] |
| Website | www.phila.gov |
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania[12] and the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. It is one of the most historically significant cities in the United States and served as the nation's capital city until 1800.[13] Philadelphia is the nation's sixth-largest city with a population of 1,603,797 as of the 2020 census. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of the world's largest metropolitan regions with 6.245 million residents in 2020.[14] Philadelphia is known for its extensive contributions to American history and for its role in the life sciences, business and industry, art, literature, and music.[15][16]
Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom. The city served as the capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era[5][17] and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's independence. Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress in 1774 following the Boston Tea Party, preserved the Liberty Bell, and hosted the Second Continental Congress during which the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, which historian Joseph Ellis has described as "the most potent and consequential words in American history".[18] Once the Revolutionary War commenced, both the Battle of Germantown and the siege of Fort Mifflin were fought within Philadelphia's city limits. The U.S. Constitution was later ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, when it was surpassed by New York City, and served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions during and following the American Revolution, including from 1790 to 1800 while the new national capital of Washington, D.C., was under construction.
With 18 four-year universities and colleges, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research.[19][20] As of 2021, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was the state's largest and nation's ninth-largest metropolitan economy with a gross metropolitan product of US$479 billion.[citation needed] The city is home to five Fortune 500 corporate headquarters as of 2022.[21] The Philadelphia skyline, which includes several globally renowned commercial skyscrapers, is expanding, primarily with new residential high-rise condominiums.[22] Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley are a biotechnology[23] and venture capital hub; and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading.[24] 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation, and the city's multimodal transport and logistics infrastructure, including Philadelphia International Airport, the PhilaPort seaport, freight rail infrastructure, roadway traffic capacity, and warehouse storage space, are all expanding. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.[25][26]
Philadelphia is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation.[27][28] Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is 2,052 acres (830 ha), representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 45th-largest urban park.[29] The city is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolution-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42 million domestic tourists who spent $6.8 billion, representing $11 billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties.[30]
With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans.[31][32][33][34] The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.[35][36]
Philadelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731),[37] hospital (1751),[37] medical school (1765),[38] national capital (1774),[39] university (by some accounts) (1779),[40] stock exchange (1790),[37] zoo (1874),[41] and business school (1881).[42] Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall.[43][44][20] From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans. In 2021, Time magazine named Philadelphia one of the world's greatest 100 places.[45]
Main article: History of Philadelphia
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Philadelphia.
See also: List of National Historic Landmarks in Philadelphia and National Register of Historic Places listings in Philadelphia
Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape (Delaware) Indians in the village of Shackamaxon. They were also called the Delaware Indians,[46] and their historical territory was along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley.[a] Most Lenape were pushed out of their Delaware homeland during the 18th century by expanding European colonies, exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts.[46] Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflict with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. The American Revolutionary War and the United States' independence pushed them further west. In the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory to present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories under the Indian removal policy.
William Penn (holding paper) and King Charles II depicted in The Birth of Pennsylvania, a 1680 painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
This 1683 portrait of Philadelphia, created by Thomas Holme, is believed to be the first map ever developed of the city.
William Penn's 1682 Treaty of Shackamaxon with the Lenape tribe depicted in Penn's Treaty with the Indians, a 1772 oil painting by Benjamin West
Europeans came to the Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists.[47] In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority. In 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.[48]
In 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony.[49] Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood.[5] Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for "brotherly love," derived from the Ancient Greek terms φίλος phílos (beloved, dear) and ἀδελφός adelphós (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named Philadelphia in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Alaşehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.[50]
Penn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.
The city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots.[51] Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.
A number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824).[52] These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.
See also: Pennsylvania in the American Revolution
,_by_John_Trumbull.jpg)
The Committee of Five presenting their draft of the Declaration of Independence in Independence Hall on June 28, 1776, as depicted in an 1818 painting by John Trumbull. Historian Joseph Ellis has called the Declaration "the most potent and consequential words in American history."[53]
President's House on Market Street, the presidential mansion of George Washington and John Adams from 1790 to 1800
Independence Hall on Chestnut Street between 5th and 6th Streets, where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution was ratified, on July 4, 1776, and June 21, 1788, respectively
Philadelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London.[54][55] In 1774, as resentment of British colonial practices and support for independence was burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress.
From 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress,[56] which adopted the Declaration of Independence in what was then called the Pennsylvania State House and now is called Independence Hall. Historian Joseph Ellis, in 2007, described the Declaration of Independence as "the most potent and consequential words in American history,"[18] and its adoption represented a declaration of war against the British Army, which was then the world's most powerful military force. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only ten designated U.S. federal holidays.
After George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia Campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily-guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until the British Army's departure from Philadelphia in June 1778.[57] Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin (September 26 to November 16, 1777) and the Battle of Germantown (October 4, 1777), were both fought within Philadelphia's city limits.
In Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777, and the city later served as the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution in Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787.
Philadelphia served as capital of the United States for much of the colonial and early post-colonial periods, including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital.[58] In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time.[59][60] The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.
The state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812 Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.
Further information: Pennsylvania in the American Civil War
Opening day ceremonies at the Centennial Exposition at Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park in 1876, the first World's Fair in the U.S. held on the 100th anniversary of the nation's founding
Throughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.[61] Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.
Immigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the 2 square miles (5.2 km2) of Center City to the roughly 134 square miles (350 km2) of Philadelphia County.[62][63] In the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.[64]
Philadelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930.[65][66] Black newcomers in the 20th century were part of the Great Migration out of the rural south and into northern and midwestern industrial cities.
Chestnut Street in Center City Philadelphia at night, February 2016
By the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population.[67] The first major reform came in 1917 when outrage over the election-year murder of a police officer led to the shrinking of the City Council from two houses to just one.[68] In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety. But political pressure prevented any long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.[69]
In 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population.[70] In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.[71][72]
Revitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Many immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway. These developments led to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.[73][74]
Philadelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with gradual yearly increases through the present.[75][76]
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