The Crack in the Bell

I drive back down South Street, through the heart of Philly’s Black neighborhood Remember the song from the 1950s that went “Where do all the hippies meet, South Street, South Street”? This was the street they were singing about. As I head east towards Front Street and the Delaware river, South Street turns into a semi-bohemian “entertainment district.” My tourist map has it marked in orange, and the legend indicates that this means “shopping.” It’s looks to me like a Greenwich Village knockoff. There are more tattoo and piercing places than I ever could have imagined. Trendy bars, too. One, called “The Tatooed Mother,” is decorated outside with ersatz freak-show posters and one called “GURU” looks like a cross between a Zen Monastery and the Starship Enterprise.

Philadelphia has done a good job not only of hanging on its trolly cars and ethnic neighborhoods, but of preserving the beautiful colonial houses near the waterfront. The neighborhood reminds me of Boston’s Back Bay, but with straight streets rather than winding ones. I know that during some of the worst excesses of the 1960s and 1970s Philadelphia had a strict ordinance that allowed no building taller than the top of William Penn’s hat (his image adorns City Hall). Real estate interests quashed that regulation. Thank God most architects had started to come to their senses by the 1980s and were making buildings that people actually liked and could use.

I’m sure these brick townhouses are enclaves inhabited only by the City’s wealthiest, but I’m happy that wise counsel, citizen activism or some trick of economics kept them intact. They could easily have been torn down for high rise apartments. I notice a cluster of children, and see that they are gathered around a man in colonial garb carrying a lantern, so the city, or perhaps the National Park Service, appreciates the historic neighborhood and makes good use of it.

Philadelphia also has an excellent public-transit system that still provides trolley service to the outlying neighborhoods. It appears well-maintained and well used, but it’s crippled by an unfortunate acronym: SEPTA. I’m stunned that there isn’t a single marketing person in City government who can figure this out.

After I finish teaching my second day, I’ve got a few hours to kill before the evening’s flight to Vermont. I grab a nice noodle dinner at a Burmese place, and still have time enough to walk around downtown.

The Liberty Bell lives in an angular bunker of tinted green glass, marble, and steel. It looks like the offspring of a marriage between a high-school cafeteria an an expensive coffee table. It does offer the ability to see the bell from outside, which is convenient for drive-by tourism.

The building is closed of course (the curse of the business traveller), but here is a taped commentary available outside the structure. I see a group of Chinese people huddled around a console on the eastern wall of the building, and hear the rise and fall of Mandarin from the speakers. I walk to the west side of the building and discover another console. It has large black buttons, each labeled with a language. The commentary is available in fourteen languages. I’d like to hear it, but German is currently playing. Maybe I’ve seen too many World War II movies, but a person speaking German over a loudspeaker does not evoke images of freedom to me. “ACTUNG! Das is Der Liberty Bell,” I imagined him saying. Several anglophones, myself included, approach the console and bang on the “English” button, but the controls do not include “stop” so we listen to Herr Liberty for a few minutes before the English commentary begins.

The German dialog didn’t do it for me, but evoking images of freedom is something the big bell has been doing for a long time. At first it hung in nearby Independence Hall, where it rang out for all sorts of civic occasions. Its placement in the bulding where the Declaration of Independence was signed marked the beginning of its fame.

It didn’t really become a symbol of liberty until 1824. According to the narrator, abolitionists used it as a symbol in the early part of the last century.

There have been a lot of myths and a lot of hype surrounding the bell. Many say that the bell rang on July 4 1776. Not true. In 1876, the Centennial year, it first became a significant tourist attraction, and it toured around the country on its own flatbed train car.

The crack in the liberty bell seems to be particularly interesting to people. It’s an ordinary crack and though there are scores of myths about it, it probably happened from ordinary handling, and was made worse by a day of ringing to celebrate George Washington’s birthday. It’s a powerful image — the ringing symbol of liberty fragile and nearly broken. I could imagine its appeal to the abolitionists. They also must have appreciated the inscription on the bell, from the book of Leviticus: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof. I learned to say this in Hebrew when I was a lad, but I’ve forgotten it. In its original context the quote was about the Jubilee, or Sabbath year. Every seventh year observant Jews were supposed to free their slaves

A few blocks away, the park service has rehabilitated the block of buildings that belonged to Benjamin Franklin. It sits on its own amid run down shops and hideous glass and brick cubes. There seem to be an inordinate amount of nail care stores nearby. Of course, as a business traveller, I’m permitted to visit only attractions that have closed, so I saw only the exterior. I think they got a little too Disney with the rehab. The idea of having a real US Post office in the very place where BF was postmaster is a brilliant, but the sign handing out front “Rooms to Let, Enquire Within, B. Franklin” is a little too precious for my tastes. I did, however, appreciate the signboard hung out for the newspaper published by Franklin’s grandson. It was called “Aurora.” Another worshipper. I wonder if Henry David knew about this paper.