Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes

Tag: 52 Weeks of Firsts

  • Yes, there are older Chinatown gates in the country. But Philadelphia’s is the real deal.

    Yes, there are older Chinatown gates in the country. But Philadelphia’s is the real deal.

    By the early 1980s, Philadelphia’s Chinatown was more than 100 years old and struggling to survive.

    Boxed in by the Vine Street Expressway, Market Street, the old Metropolitan Hospital, and the Convention Center, the neighborhood had no space to grow and no way to shine.

    In 1982, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. Cecilia Moy Yep — well-known for stopping the razing of Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church — and architect James Guo went to China and formalized a Sister City agreement between Philadelphia and the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.

    Anh Ly’s “One” sculpture unites Philly’s Friendship Gate and Tianjin’s Ferris wheel bridge. The supporting legs resemble two people holding hands across culture and distance. The Chinese dragon’s spirit reinforces this connection with resilience and reverence.

    Plans for an ornate Chinatown entryway followed. In October 1983, 12 artisans from Tianjin and Beijing arrived in Philadelphia and spent three months building a 88-ton, 40-foot-tall gate with wood, tiles, stone bases, and a special material that incorporates pig’s blood that’s painted over the wood to stop it from fading and shipped from China.

    The San Francisco Chinatown Gate had been built in the 1970s and Boston’s was finished in 1982. But Philly’s Friendship Gate, erected at the intersection of 10th and Arch Streets, is the first Chinese American archway built with materials from Asia, making Philly’s gate the “authentic” deal.

    In 1775, 24 men met in a Philadelphia tavern. That meeting led to ending slavery in America.

    That first authentic Chinese gate built in America will be feted Saturday in Chinatown at the Crane Community Center, this week’s Philadelphia Historic District’s Firstival celebration. Firstivals are a year’s worth of parties marking America’s 250th birthday, noting events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America and often the world.

    The Friendship Gate, built in traditional Qing Dynasty style, cost more than $200,000 in city funds to construct. The ribbon-cutting ceremony in January 1984 featured the ceremonial dance of the Chinese lion known as Wushi, performed for good luck and to chase away evil spirits, and speeches from city officials in both Mandarin and English.

    “We needed something to attract people into Chinatown,” Yep told The Inquirer, shortly after its Jan. 31, 1984, unveiling.

    Its mud brown roof, square beams, dazzling green and gold patterns, and birds and dragons outlining the sky, mark the point where Center City meets the Chinese community.

    A Daily News clipping from Jan. 23, 1984, shows Chinatown’s Friendship Gate during construction.

    Five months after the Friendship Gate was completed, a fire — then the biggest in Center City history — raced north from 10th and Filbert Streets and stopped, almost magically, at the Friendship Gate.

    “I am so glad the gate was not damaged,” T.T. Chang, then president of the Chinese Cultural Society — and unofficial mayor of Chinatown — told The Inquirer.

    In September 1984, the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation introduced the first official postcard with the Friendship Gate’s image, marking it as a bona fide tourist attraction. (Although its real goal was to raise $55,000 to pay for the portion of the gate the city refused to pay for.)

    In 2008, in its 24th year as a recognized Philadelphia monument, the gate was rededicated after a yearlong, $200,000 renovation project.

    Community organizers hold a “No Arena” block party near the Friendship Gate in Chinatown on Feb. 2, 2025, as the neighborhood celebrates the Lunar New Year with a parade, lion dancers, and fireworks.

    Chinatown has had its challenges over the last decades, but it continues to thrive. For 41 years, the Friendship Gate has stood proudly, a welcoming archway rooted in resistance.

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Feb. 21, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Crane Community Center, 1001 Vine St. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from the Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week. A “52 Weeks of Firsts” podcast, produced by All That’s Good Productions, drops every Tuesday.

  • In 1775, 24 men met in a Philadelphia tavern. That meeting led to ending slavery in America.

    In 1775, 24 men met in a Philadelphia tavern. That meeting led to ending slavery in America.

    In 1773 Dinah Nevil, an Indigenous, Black, and European multiracial woman and her four children arrived in Philadelphia from Flemington, N.J, under orders from a slave trader who intended to eventually sell Nevil to the Deep South, or perhaps the Caribbean.

    Nevil protested.

    Philadelphia authorities sympathetic to her plight, kept her in a work house for two years while figuring out the next steps to her freedom. The conditions were so horrid two of her children died.

    An image of Dinah Nevil imagined by the 1838 Black Metropolis.

    Enter Israel Pemberton Jr. and Thomas Harrison, Quakers who, like most Quakers in colonial Philadelphia, actively fought slavery. Keeping people in bondage was considered immoral in their religion.

    Pemberton and Harrison filed a lawsuit against Nevil’s enslaver because they sought to set a precedent by making it unlawful to sell Black people into slavery on free soil, not just in Pennsylvania, but in all of the colonies.

    So, on April 14, 1775, Quaker leaders and educators Anthony Benezet and John Woolman gathered 24 men — 17 of whom were Quakers — at the Rising Sun Tavern to discuss legal strategies on how to make that happen.

    Artist Iris Barbee Bonner’s No. 1 statue pays homage to William Still, an Underground Railroad conductor and key member of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.

    That was the first gathering of an antislavery society in America and it will be celebrated Saturday at the African American Museum, part of the Philadelphia Historic District’s weekly firstival day party. Firstivals are a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday marking events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America and often the world.

    The group led by Benezet and Woolman named themselves the Society for Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. In addition to Nevil’s case, they advocated for four other people of color who were in the midst of being sold away from their families. Nevil was ultimately freed when Harrison bought her and within days, signed manumission papers.

    In 1776, 18 years after Quakers told their members they could no longer participate in the slave trade, Quakers were forbidden from enslaving people. Thanks to the Quakers’ advocacy, Pennsylvania enacted the 1780 Gradual Abolition of Slavery Act, America’s first law to end slavery.

    A formerly enslaved man was thrown out of an Old City church. He then founded America’s first African Methodist Episcopal church.

    Four years later, 18 Philadelphians resurrected the Society for Relief of Free Negroes and renamed it Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, or PAS. Their goal was to stop Black and brown people from being indiscriminately picked up and sold into slavery in what was now a free state, but also to end slavery all together.

    “They knew they couldn’t do it overnight,” said Emma Lapsansky-Werner, an American history professor at Haverford College. “What they did was organize so that one-by-one Black people would find freedom.”

    Within two years, the PAS grew to 82 members and inspired other cities like New York and Boston to establish branches of their own. In 1787 — the same year the delegates voted that Black people were three-fifths of a person — Ben Franklin became the society’s president and under his leadership, the society petitioned the legislature to amend the act of 1780. This included preventing enslavers from taking pregnant enslaved women to the South so their children would remain property.

    William Still was a member of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and chair of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.

    The PAS wasn’t without its prejudices. It wasn’t until 1842 — 67 years after its founding — that Robert Purvis, a Black man, was allowed to join. William Still joined in 1847. Through Still’s work at the PAS and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, he served as an Underground Railroad conductor helping more than 1,000 enslaved people find freedom.

    The PAS still exists today and advocates for equal rights and opportunities for all Americans.

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Feb. 14, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., The African American Museum Philadelphia, 701 Arch St. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week. A “52 Weeks of Firsts” podcast, produced by All That’s Good Productions, drops every Tuesday.

  • A formerly enslaved man was thrown out of an Old City church. He then founded America’s first African Methodist Episcopal church.

    A formerly enslaved man was thrown out of an Old City church. He then founded America’s first African Methodist Episcopal church.

    Mark Tyler, historiographer and executive director of research and scholarship of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, often wonders: What if Christians stood up in the 1780s and challenged the articles of the U.S. Constitution that said Black people were not whole human beings?

    What if the American branch of the Methodist church followed the teachings of its founder, John Wesley, who taught that slavery was a violation of Christian mercy? What if the ushers of Old City’s St. George’s Methodist Church didn’t kick formerly enslaved congregants Richard Allen and Absalom Jones out of the general congregation and force them to worship in segregated pews?

    “We would have avoided the Civil War,” Tyler said. “We would have avoided Jim Crow. We would have avoided the moment in history we are in now.”

    A stained glass window of founder Richard Allen and Mother Bethel AME Church’s previous homes is at entrance of the church.

    Instead, American Methodists sided with southern landholders who relied on cost-free Black labor to build their empires. Evangelical churches, Tyler said, were among the first institutions to practice segregation.

    Allen and Jones went on to start their own churches.

    Jones founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas at 5th and Adelphi Streets. (Today the church is at 6361 Lancaster Ave. in West Philly.)

    Allen established Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, regarded as America’s — and the world’s — first AME congregation.

    Mother Bethel will celebrate this history at the Philadelphia Historical District’s weekly “firstival,” part of a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday. Each Saturday in 2026, the historic district is hosting a daytime shindig honoring an event that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America and often the world.

    Iris Barbee Bonner is a fashion designer and graphic artist who brought her experience growing up in the AME Church to this 52 Weeks of Firsts No. 1

    Allen was born into slavery in Philadelphia in 1760. He bought his freedom from his enslaver, a devout Methodist who converted many of the people he enslaved, in 1783. Allen answered the call to preach and traveled the mid-Atlantic for a few years evangelizing freed and enslaved people.

    In 1786, he returned to Philadelphia, joined St. George’s, and started a 5 a.m. worship service. He led the service for a year-and-a-half before walking out in November of 1787.

    “Certainly there had been moments of resistance in colonial Black communities,” Tyler said. “But this walkout was significant because it led to the emergence of the first American institutions by and for Black people,” Tyler said.

    Allen bought land at Sixth and Lombard Streets — where Mother Bethel sits now — on Oct. 10, 1791. Mother Bethel’s first building, a repurposed blacksmith shop, was dedicated on July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.

    The first public Girl Scout cookie sale took place at the intersection of Broad and Arch Streets

    A second building was erected in 1805, a third in 1841, and the current building was completed in 1890.

    “We are the oldest independent denomination founded by people of color in the United States,” said the Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness, pastor of Mother Bethel. “Our church sits on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African Americans.”

    In 1816, 30 years after Allen established Mother Bethel, he invited delegates of Black Methodist churches in Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey to a conference, establishing the AME Church as its own denomination.

    A statue of Mother Bethel AME Church founder Richard Allen stands on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by Black Americans in Philadelphia on Oct 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis Andres Henao)

    Mother Bethel has stood at the center of civil rights for centuries, from serving as a station on the Underground Railroad to uniting interfaith clergy who questioned $50 million of community benefits slated to go to the Sixers arena in 2024.

    “We are the Mother Church,” Cavaness said. “ … the foundation of so much Philadelphia history, so much American history. It’s an honor to be the sacred caretaker of this history.”

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Feb. 7, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., at Mother Bethel, 419 S. Sixth St. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week. A “52 Weeks of Firsts” podcast, produced by All That’s Good Productions, drops every Tuesday.

  • The first public Girl Scout cookie sale took place at the intersection of Broad and Arch Streets

    The first public Girl Scout cookie sale took place at the intersection of Broad and Arch Streets

    The Girl Scouts, founded in Savannah, Ga., in 1912 by philanthropist Juliette Gordon Low, held its first bake sale in 1917 to raise money for troop activities.

    The booming direct cookie sales business, however, was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 12, 1932, at the Philadelphia Gas Co., then located at the intersection of Broad and Arch Streets.

    That inaugural public Girl Scout cookie sale will be remembered Saturday at Center City’s PECO building, part of the Philadelphia Historic District’s weekly celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The historic district pays homage to events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America — and often the world — with a weekly day party called a Firstival.

    Artist Carol Cannon-Nesco, a top Girl Scout cookie seller as a child, celebrates the legacy of the Girl Scouts with pictures of the individual cookies.

    “It was the first time the Girl Scouts sold their cookies to people outside of their immediate community,” said Amanda Harrity, director of product programs for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania.

    In 1932, a Philadelphia Girl Scout told her parents that her troop needed a place to bake cookies in order to raise money for nurseries, Depression-era organizations that cared for children of working parents. The little girl’s parents, who worked at the Philadelphia Gas Co., got permission for the Scouts to bake cookies on the shiny new gas ranges in the gas company’s street-level windows.

    On the afternoon of Nov. 12, the Girl Scouts baked batch upon batch of their shamrock-shaped signature shortbread cookie, the Trefoil. The sweet, buttery aroma wafted through Center City streets and passersby asked if they could buy the cookies, hot out of the test kitchen’s ovens.

    The Girl Scouts agreed.

    Trefoils (shortbread) and peanut butter sandwiches, also known as Do-si-dos. (Dreamstime/TNS)

    “I don’t remember how many cookies we baked that day,” then 80-year-old Girl Scout Midge Mason told The Inquirer in 2001 when the state erected a historic marker at Broad and Arch, marking the sale. “I do know we baked a lot of cookies.”

    The next year, the Girl Scouts were back at the Philadelphia Gas Company to raise the money needed to pay off the mortgage of its facility at Camp Indian Run in Glenmoore, Chester County. (That facility closed in the early 2000s.)

    Yes, Philly is most definitely a basketball city. Dating all the way back to 1898.

    In 1934, the Philadelphia Girl Scouts hired Keebler — now Little Brownie Bakers — to bake Trefoils, selling them at 23 cents a box, making them the first Girl Scouts to sell commercially baked cookies.

    Two years later, Girl Scouts all around the country began using commercial bakeries to bake cookies for their yearly fundraiser.

    Today, more than 200 million boxes of cookies are sold in America at an average price of $6 a box; 3.5 million of those boxes are sold in Eastern Pennsylvania, Harrity said.

    Girl Scout cookies are baked in two bakeries in the country: ABC Bakers in North Sioux City, S.D., and Little Brownie Bakers in Louisville, Ky. There are 12 varieties of cookies including this year’s newest Exploremores, inspired by Rocky Road ice cream.

    Exploremores are the new flavor of Girl Scout cookie for the 2026 sales campaign.

    Seventy-five cents of every dollar from Girl Scout cookie sales are reinvested back into girl scouting, Harrity explained. In Eastern Pennsylvania, that includes maintaining 1,500 acres of property and underwriting Scouts’ camp experiences.

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Jan. 31, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m., at the PECO Building at 2300 Market Street. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week.

  • Yes, Philly is most definitely a basketball city. Dating all the way back to 1898.

    Yes, Philly is most definitely a basketball city. Dating all the way back to 1898.

    On Dec. 1, 1898, about 1,000 people gathered at a court in Textile Hall — today’s Kensington neighborhood. They were there to watch the Philadelphia Hancock Athletic Association play the New Jersey Trenton Nationals in America’s first professional basketball game.

    According to an article in the following day’s Philadelphia Times, the game got a late start because referees were still ironing out the rules of the world’s newest professional sport.

    But once the game got underway, it was fast and furious.

    Hancock “started with a rush, scoring two field goals before the players had become warmed up to their work,” the story reads.

    “Throughout the entire first half, the home team had the better of the argument, taking advantage of every opportunity finishing the half in the lead by a score of 11 to [0].”

    In the end, Philadelphia lost by two points, a disappointment Philly sports fans know all too well, even in these modern times.

    The final score: 21 to 19.

    Daniel Lipschutz blended history into his love of the modern day sport for this sculpture.

    That first game of the National Basketball League will be feted this Saturday at a Firstival at Xfinity Mobile Arena. Firstivals are the Philadelphia Historic District’s weekly day parties celebrating events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America, and often the world. They are part of a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

    James Naismith, a YMCA coach in Springfield, Mass., invented basketball in 1891 to keep kids active during winter months. The sport incorporated elements of rugby, lacrosse, and soccer. Instead of throwing balls into a bottomless net to score, players threw balls into peach baskets.

    (In other words, there was no such thing as a rebound.)

    James Naismith, inventor of basketball, with a ball and a basket.

    Basketball quickly became popular with college students and in 1898, Naismith was recruited to coach the University of Kansas basketball team.

    That same year, Horace Fogel, sports editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, organized the first professional basketball league with three teams from Philadelphia and three from South Jersey.

    A 12-foot chain-link cage separated players from the fans. Ropes replaced these iron cages in the 1920s.

    Fogel’s National Basketball League lasted just five years, folding in 1904 because of quick player turnover eating into profits. A second league was formed in 1937 and was sponsored by Goodyear. In 1946, the Basketball Association of America was established.

    And in 1949, the BAA and NBL merged to create today’s NBA.

    “This really goes to show that Philadelphia is a sports city,” said Shavonnia Corbin Johnson, vice president of civic affairs for the 76ers. “When people talk about Philadelphia sports rooted in history, tradition, and passion, it’s true, but now we know that America’s true love of sports can trace its roots right back here.”

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Jan. 24, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m., at Xfinity Mobile Arena, 3601 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, Pa. Premium Access Entrance on the Broad Street side, near Lot C. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week.

  • Founding Father Ben Franklin also founded America’s first volunteer fire department

    Founding Father Ben Franklin also founded America’s first volunteer fire department

    Colonial Philadelphia — a community of wooden dwellings and businesses along the Delaware River back in the 1700s — was under constant threat of burning to the ground. Fires could and did start from the haphazard fling of a cigarette, or burning the soot out of chimneys, or sometimes the accidental drop of a lantern.

    By 1730, the city had just one fire engine — a steam-powered box car — and dozens of buckets for carrying water to extinguish flames. When a fire that year on Fishbourne Wharf nearly destroyed the city, causing 5,000 pounds in property damage, Ben Franklin took notice.

    The incident prompted him to advocate for fire prevention in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, coining the still-used fire safety mantra, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

    On Dec. 7, 1736, Franklin and 24 other prominent Philadelphians established the Union Fire Company.

    The formation of the Union Fire Company will be remembered Saturday at the Firstival to be held at Fireman’s Hall Museum. Firstivals are the Philadelphia Historic District’s weekly day parties celebrating historic events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America, and often the world. They are part of a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

    Artist Jenn Procacci’s sculpture incorporates maps of 1700s Philadelphia highlighting routes volunteer firefighters would take to extinguish blazes.

    The Union Fire Company, also called the Bucket Brigade, was modeled after mutual aid firefighting organizations in Boston. In its early years, the company only helped its members put out fires in their homes or properties.

    In 1742, the members voted to help any Philadelphian whose home or property was ablaze. The fact that they helped all Philadelphians, not just members, made the company America’s first volunteer fire department.

    Within the decade, Philadelphia had eight volunteer fire companies.

    These early volunteer fire companies were elite organizations that capped their memberships at about 30, explained Carol Smith, curator and archivist at Fireman’s Hall Museum. Members provided their own equipment: buckets for carrying water to put out fires and bags to salvage items from being destroyed. Companies had several meetings a year and members were fined for absence or tardiness.

    As the home of the country’s first volunteer firefighting outfit, Philadelphia was progressive when it came to fighting fires — they were among the first companies in the country to experiment with innovative hoses. The city also was unique in establishing ways to support Philadelphia residents impacted by fire.

    In 1752, Franklin started the nation’s first property insurance company, the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, still operating today.

    Philadelphia’s early network of volunteer firefighters stopped major fires, like the 1794 burning of Zion Lutheran Church, and prevented extensive fire damage to the city.

    “A lot of it was because of the advances in firefighting technology like updated hoses,” Smith said. “Our volunteer fire departments were very proactive.”

    Today’s fire houses are descendants of Ben Franklin’s Union Fire Company.

    The Union Fire Company housed its equipment on Old City’s Grindstone Alley and was active through the early 1800s, disbanding in 1843. Its remaining members joined the Vigilant Engine Company, that, in 1871 became Engine 8, one of the city’s first municipal fire stations.

    It remains open.

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Jan. 17, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m., Fireman’s Hall Museum, 147 N. Second St. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week.

  • What was the first city-sponsored New Year’s Day procession in America? The answer lies in Philly.

    What was the first city-sponsored New Year’s Day procession in America? The answer lies in Philly.

    As the fog lifted on Jan. 1, 1901, four Fancy Dress Clubs and 16 Comic Clubs gathered at the corner of Broad and Reed Streets for the first ever Mummers Parade.

    “Kings, emperors, knights and jesters, clothed in purple royal or tinkling tensel [sic], wended their way up the broad thoroughfare …” reads a front-page story from the Jan. 2, 1901, Philadelphia Inquirer. “In the throng of merry makers, no tribe no nation, scarcely an individual was neglected.”

    That inaugural Mummers Parade was America’s first folk parade. It also marks the first time an American city hosted a New Year’s Day procession.

    It will be remembered Saturday at the Firstival in the Mummers Museum. Firstivals are the Philadelphia Historic District’s weekly day parties celebrating historic events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America, and often the world. They are part of a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

    Artist Anh Ly’s No. 1 highlights the Mummers Parade’s vibrant costumes, instruments and playful traditions.

    That first Mummers Parade began 125 years ago at 9 a.m. on a chilly overcast morning, said Mark A. Montanaro, the Mummers Museum’s curator. It took participants just two hours to march up Broad Street and around City Hall to Girard Avenue.

    Three hundred dollars — $11,575 in today’s money — was awarded to the parade’s two first-place winners: the Elkton Association, part of the Fancy Dressed Club; and the White Cap Association, belonging to the Comic Club.

    Revelers partied all day and into the night.

    The boisterousness remains to this day. So much so that the Philadelphia Historic District did not want to start the Firstival celebrations with the parade, even though that was the initial plan. Why? Because they assumed the Mummers would still be recovering from their parade.

    America’s first balloon ride happened right here in Philly, the birthplace of American aeronautics

    The word mummer is derived from Momus, the Greek god of satire and mockery. Mommer is the Old French word for mime.

    Philadelphia’s 17th century English and Swedish immigrants dressed in elaborate regalia during the days between Christmas and New Year’s, knocked on their neighbors’ doors, and demanded treats of sweets and nuts. Over the decades, the door-to-door tradition turned into rambunctious neighborhood parties as Dutch, Irish, and Italian immigrants joined in on the fun.

    In November of 1900, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reporter and theatrical promoter H. Bart McHugh and City Councilman John H. Baizley asked Mayor Samuel Ashbridge if the city would consolidate the block parties into one big parade.

    Plans were finalized by mid-December.

    The Mummers Parade remains one of Philadelphia’s most enduring traditions. It’s only been canceled three times: during the 1919 Spanish Flu, 1934 during the Great Depression, and 2021 during COVID. (This year, the String Band Division called off its competition due to strong winds.)

    The Jokers perform during the Fancy Brigade Finale at the Pennsylvania Convention Center during the 2026 Mummers Parade in Philadelphia on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026.

    Parade routes have changed; today it starts at City Hall and ends at Washington Avenue. At times its been fraught with racial controversy, as some members have appeared in blackface as recently as 2020.

    That’s all in the past, Montanaro stressed.

    “The Mummers are striving for inclusivity,” Montanaro said. “We are a little bit of Mardi Gras, a little bit of Carnival, and a whole lot of Philly.”

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Jan. 9, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m., at the Mummers Museum, located at 1100 S. 2nd Street. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week.

  • America’s first balloon ride happened right here in Philly, the birthplace of American aeronautics

    America’s first balloon ride happened right here in Philly, the birthplace of American aeronautics

    It was a cold January morning in colonial Philadelphia. The year was 1793 and Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Adams, and George Washington were among dozens of spectators gathered in the Walnut Street Prison workyard. The Founding Fathers watched in awe as French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard prepared to take flight.

    Blanchard’s hydrogen-powered balloon rose up into the sky. It was the first time someone had ever seen a balloon take off in America.

    Two and a half hours later, Blanchard landed the blue-and-yellow striped silk balloon 15 miles north in a Deptford, N.J., field that today is a Walmart Supercenter parking lot.

    That historic moment — America’s first balloon ride — will be remembered on Saturday at the Athenæum, where the Walnut Street Prison workyard once stood.

    The festivities will kick off the Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts, a weekly day party marking events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America, and often the world. Each Saturday, the Historic District will partner with a local institution to host a free festival — or “Firstival.” This will be part of a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

    Each of those locations will feature a foam sculpture illustrated by a Mural Arts of Philadelphia artist commemorating the historic event.

    Mural Arts artist Allegra Yvonne Gia infused images of the Walnut Street prison yard, The Athenæum of Philadelphia, and hydrogen balloons in this illustration.

    Blanchard’s historic balloon ride proves that even back then, Philadelphia resonated greatly with Parisian culture.

    While in Paris negotiating an end to the Revolutionary War in 1783, America’s A-list forefathers, Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay witnessed some of the world’s first balloon rides. Impressed, they came back to Philadelphia raving about the innovation.

    Two years later, Blanchard, and co-aeronaut John Jefferies, became the first people to sail over the English Channel in a hydrogen balloon. (He chose hydrogen because hot air balloons were powered by fire and prone to explosion, thereby making any flight more than three miles risky.)

    The English Channel trip made Blanchard a big deal in aeronautical circles, and he started traveling around the world, flying balloons, and charging spectators, explained Beth Shalom Hessel, executive director of the Athenæum of Philadelphia

    On Jan. 9, 1793, Blanchard made his landmark 45th flight in Philadelphia, turning the Walnut Street Prison workyard into the birthplace of aeronautics in America.

    Onlookers paid $5 — more than $150 in today’s money — to witness Blanchard take off. He carried with him a dog and a letter from Washington. This letter, which demanded that Blanchard be offered safe passage wherever he landed, is considered by many to be the first ever American passport.

    “As a way of making money and drumming up interest in his balloon, Blanchard intentionally chose Philadelphia for his first American flight,” Hessel said. “And that’s fascinating.”

    This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Jan. 3, 11 a.m.- 1 p.m., at the Athenæum of Philadelphia, 219 S. Sixth St. The Inquirer will highlight a Philly “first” from the 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week.