50 Fun Facts About Philadelphia

Philadelphia's name is Greek for what?

Brotherly love comes from the Greek philos, 'beloved', and adelphos, 'brother', and the city's founder wanted a place where people of every faith could worship freely.

Philadelphia's founder gave many of its streets names taken from what?

Trees supplied the names: in 1684 Wynne Street, named for Thomas Wynne's home there, became Chestnut Street.

What drove Congress out of Philadelphia to Princeton in 1783?

A soldiers' mutiny by unpaid Continental troops surrounded the building where Congress met, and the episode later pushed the framers toward a federal capital district.

Which Native American people lived at Shackamaxon on the site of Philadelphia?

The Lenape leader Tamanend is said to have pledged peace with the colonists at Shackamaxon, now Kensington and Fishtown, under an elm that fell in 1810.

The Liberty Bell was cast in 1752 by a London firm later renamed what?

The Whitechapel Foundry's bell cracked when first rung in Philadelphia, so local metalworkers John Pass and John Stow melted it down and recast it, adding their names.

Which movement first gave the Liberty Bell its name and adopted it as a symbol?

The abolitionists' Anti-Slavery Record first called it the Liberty Bell in 1835, and George Lippard's 1847 story invented the tale of it ringing on July 4, 1776.

The Liberty Bell's inscription begins 'Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the' what?

Inhabitants thereof closes the bell's quotation of Leviticus 25:10, and the bell spells the colony 'Pensylvania', the same variant Alexander Hamilton used on the Constitution's signature page.

Independence Hall was originally built as what?

The Pennsylvania State House was completed in 1753, and both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and adopted in its Assembly Room.

Independence Hall has appeared on the back of which US banknote since 1928?

The $100 bill has shown Independence Hall on its back since 1928, and John Trumbull's painting set in the hall's Assembly Room appears on the back of the $2 bill.

When its tower was finished in 1894, Philadelphia City Hall held what world record?

Tallest habitable building in the world was City Hall's title from 1894 until New York's Singer Building passed its 548 feet in 1908.

Whose 37-foot bronze statue stands on top of City Hall?

William Penn's statue by Alexander Milne Calder weighs over 53,000 pounds, and Calder made more than 250 other sculptures for the building.

Which 1987 event did Philadelphia fans blame for a sports title drought?

A skyscraper rising above the City Hall statue, One Liberty Place, broke a long gentlemen's agreement on height, and no major Philadelphia team won a title again until 2008.

Which building, completed in 2018, was the tallest in the US outside Manhattan and Chicago as of 2025?

Comcast Technology Center rises 1,121 feet, more than double City Hall's 548, and its Four Seasons hotel has its lobby on the 60th floor.

Which two hot-dog-stand brothers are credited with inventing the cheesesteak?

Pat and Harry Olivieri ran a hot dog stand when they first grilled chopped steak and onions, and Pat's son dates the cheese to 1951, added by manager 'Cocky Joe' Lorenza.

Which cheesesteak shop, founded in 1966, faces its older rival across 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue?

Geno's founder Joey Vento named his son Geno in 1971, and Geno took over the shop after his father died in 2011.

Per a popular account, 'hoagie' comes from Italian-American workers at a WWI shipyard known as what?

Hog Island's shipyard workers, one legend says, ate the 'Hog Island' sandwich that became the hoagie, which Mayor Ed Rendell later declared Philadelphia's official sandwich.

Which snack-cake company, maker of the Butterscotch Krimpet, was founded in Philadelphia in 1914?

Tastykake's most popular product, Kandy Kakes, sells so well that nearly half a million are baked and packaged each day.

The convenience chain Wawa is named after a Pennsylvania town whose name comes from an Ojibwe word for what?

The first Wawa Food Market opened in Folsom in 1964, though the logo shows a Canada goose rather than a snow goose.

Reading Terminal Market opened in 1893 under what?

A railroad's elevated train shed, the Reading Railroad's, roofed a market moved indoors after the city judged open-air street markets unhygienic and a traffic hazard.

Rocky's run up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps was one of the first big-screen uses of which camera rig?

Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown, carried the camera smoothly up the 72 steps, though Rocky was only the third film to use the rig.

The bronze statue of Stallone's boxer at the museum steps was originally commissioned for which movie?

Rocky III brought A. Thomas Schomberg's bronze to the top of the museum steps, and after filming the city moved it to the Spectrum before it returned to the base of the steps in 2006.

Philadelphia's museum parkway was designed in 1917 by Jacques Greber to emulate which famous boulevard?

The Champs-Elysees ends at the Arc de Triomphe, and the parkway ends at the Art Museum, giving 'a slice of Paris in Philadelphia'.

Which song is the Mummers Parade's traditional theme?

Oh, Dem Golden Slippers, an 1879 minstrel song by African American composer James A. Bland, is the unofficial anthem of a parade the city first made official in 1901.

Which Mummers Parade division plays banjos, saxophones and accordions but no brass instruments?

String Bands are limited to unamplified strings, reeds and percussion, so saxophones and banjos march but trumpets stay home.

What delayed the opening of Philadelphia's zoo, chartered in 1859, until 1874?

The Civil War put the chartered zoo on hold, and when America's first zoo opened on 1 July 1874 it had 1,000 animals and charged 25 cents.

Which Old City lane, lined with 32 houses, is called the nation's oldest residential street?

Elfreth's Alley began about 1703 as a cart path two neighbours opened between their properties, and its houses went up over more than a century.

Which polymath established the Library Company of Philadelphia, the nation's first, in 1731?

Benjamin Franklin got his Junto club to pool money for books, and the Library Company later served as the Library of Congress while the government sat in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia bourse, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, holds what distinction?

Nation's oldest stock exchange: it opened in 1790 as the Board of Brokers of Philadelphia and, as Nasdaq PHLX, now specialises in options.

The 1793 epidemic that killed roughly ten percent of Philadelphia's population was an outbreak of what?

Yellow fever killed 5,000 or more people, and by the end of September 20,000 residents had fled, while President Washington left for Mount Vernon.

Which invention was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Fairmount Park, the first official US World's Fair?

Bell's telephone was set up at opposite ends of Machinery Hall, and the fair drew nearly 10 million visitors between May and November.

On which radical group's headquarters did Philadelphia police drop a bomb in 1985, killing eleven?

MOVE's Osage Avenue house caught fire, and officials let it burn: the blaze destroyed 61 homes and left some 250 people homeless.

The 1854 Act of Consolidation did what to the city?

It made its borders match the county, growing the city from about 2 square miles to 134, partly so criminals could no longer escape city police into neighbouring districts.

Which notorious gangster was once held at Eastern State Penitentiary?

Al Capone's cell is now on display to visitors, and the prison's radial wagon-wheel plan was copied by about 300 prisons worldwide.

Eastern State Penitentiary first kept prisoners in what condition?

Solitary confinement was the core of its 'separate system', and guards hooded prisoners whenever they left their cells so other inmates could not recognise them.

Betsy Ross, credited by her family with sewing the first US flag, worked in which trade?

Upholstery was her trade, and a 1777 payment shows she made ships' colours for the Pennsylvania navy; the first-flag story came from her grandson William Canby in 1870.

Which street alongside Philadelphia's Boathouse Row is named for a local oarsman?

Kelly Drive honours John B. Kelly Jr., Grace Kelly's brother, who twice won Henley's Diamond Sculls, the race that had turned away his bricklayer father.

Which Philadelphia club has played in the same city under the same name since 1883?

The Phillies became the first North American pro sports franchise to lose 10,000 games, falling to the St. Louis Cardinals in July 2007.

In the 'Philly Special' trick play at Super Bowl LII, who caught the touchdown pass?

Nick Foles caught Trey Burton's pass after a direct snap to Corey Clement, becoming the first player to throw and catch a touchdown in a Super Bowl.

Which five universities founded Philadelphia's 'Big 5' college basketball rivalry?

La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, Villanova founded the Big 5, and Drexel joined for the 2023-24 season, giving the rivalry six schools.

Which teen dance show was produced in Philadelphia before moving to LA in 1964?

American Bandstand began locally as Bandstand in 1952 under host Bob Horn, and Dick Clark took over in 1956 after Horn's drunk-driving arrest.

Thanks to a program begun in 1984, Philadelphia has more of what public artwork than any US city?

Murals became the city's signature after Jane Golden's 1984 project within the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network put graffiti writers to work painting walls.

Which Robert Indiana word sculpture gives its name to a Center City park in Philadelphia?

LOVE was chosen for the Museum of Modern Art's 1965 Christmas card, and the 1973 LOVE stamp was unveiled at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

What kind of house has been Philadelphia's most common home since colonial times?

The row house reached the US through Philadelphia, where Thomas Carstairs's look-alike rows of about 1799 to 1820 began the nation's speculative housing.

Which sport did Philadelphia's Athletics play when they formed in 1860?

Baseball's Athletics won the first National Association pennant in 1871 and played in the first National League game in 1876, but were expelled that year.

Which city edged out Philadelphia as the fifth most populous US city in 2020?

Phoenix counted 1,608,139 people to Philadelphia's 1,603,797, a margin of under 5,000 that left Philadelphia sixth.

Which two rivers frame Philadelphia?

The Delaware and the Schuylkill bounded the original city of about 2 square miles, which ran between them from Vine Street to South Street.

As of 2025, which Philadelphia rail hub was the third-busiest station in the Amtrak system?

30th Street served over 5.5 million Amtrak passengers in fiscal 2025, trailing Washington Union Station, Amtrak's second-busiest.

Philadelphia's biotech scene has earned the city which nickname?

Cellicon Valley reflects the city's lead in immunotherapy: tisagenlecleucel, developed by Carl June's team and approved by the FDA in 2017, was the first US treatment with a gene therapy step.

In 1835 some 20,000 Philadelphia laborers staged the first general strike in North America, winning what?

The ten-hour workday, 'six to six' with meal breaks, came after three weeks along with higher wages, once Irish coal heavers on the city's wharves had walked out.

What do Philadelphians call the frozen dessert that elsewhere goes by Italian ice?

Water ice is the local name, and Rita's, now in about 30 states, began in 1984 as one Bensalem shop named after founder Bob Tumolo's wife.