Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Philly History

Theron and I went to see the Liberty Bell on our first day in Philly. After City Hall, we trudged about 15 blocks to the historical part of Philly. (Ironically it is pretty far away from City Center.) These buildings sat only a few blocks from the Delaware River and New Jersey. The Liberty Bell is above. You can see the crack in it. They say they have no idea how the crack got into it. In case you forgot or didn't know, the Liberty Bell was rung once they finished the Declaration of Independence. The Liberty Bell was purchased by Philly in 1751 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Penn's land grant, which made Philly in 1701.




The back side of the bell has no crack. It was said during the Civil War that abolitionists used the bell as a symbol for ending slavery.





The building with the bell tower is Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was made and signed and the Constitution was written. Very beautiful. The Liberty Bell hung in this bell tower back when it was being used.

This building is called Congress Hall, where the first Congress met in the U.S.

The room with the windows is where the Supreme Court would meet. They also had other types of trials in this room. The jury box was meant to hold 12 people, however, by today's standards, it would probably only fit 6 people comfortably. Talk about hard benches, the jury had to sit on wooden benches all day with no cushions or anything. The Justices would sit behind the railing, but in front of the windows. The table in front of the railing was for counsel.

This is the outside of the "old" City Hall (not the one talked about below). This was City Hall before Philly was really a city. However, inside this building was the Supreme Court Chamber. Unfortunately they only let us go into the one room.

All of these buildings and the Liberty Bell lined a square area outside. So after seeing the bell, all of these buildings were behind it. They are also building a replica of George Washington's house right before he became president. In the old days, his house would have been where I was standing to take this picture.

Below is the first Bank of America (not the chain, the actual first bank in this country). The columns out front were not perfect, you could see the chip marks where stonemasons had to work to shape the columns from stone.

Within the courtyard of all these cool historical buildings was a tree with two names inscribed in it. Although the tree looks pretty thin, it was actually pretty big (at least 100-150 years old - if not older). You can see someone inscribed their names in the tree and it had been done so long ago, the tree actually grew and made the letters larger and deeper. (George -n- Sallie) It might say '10 below their names, which would probably put this inscription sometime in 1910, so almost 100 years old.