Rittenhouse Square

 Today we all walked to Rittenhouse Square. The Square is a city park- one of the original ones planned by William Penn. This is one entrance.

On the way there, we toured a lot of the typical Philadelphia streets. More on that another day. However, I will show you Delancey Place because it is one of the fanciest of the sections planned by Penn.

The townhouse with the rounded front (kind of behind the tree) is for sale at $4.25 million. We are standing in front of another that was having an open house, so we went in to look around. Its price is only $3 million. These all have four floors and a finished basement with a garage off the alley which is actually wide enough to drive. (The alley behind Dave's house is only wide enough to walk.) The house we toured was built in 1800. No matter how fancy they are, you've got five floors to navigate with stairs.

I actually learned a lot from the realtor. The reason the fancy streets have very narrow streets with small townhouses flanking them was part of the design. Tradespeople like blacksmiths and seamstresses lived and worked in the small houses. This created a neighborhood of services for the upper-class homes.

I didn't do a very good job of getting pictures that really show you the park. There is a lot of green space, and today was in the 60s. Despite a little breeze there were a LOT of people picnicking, walking, and enjoying themselves. There were several street musicians.

There was a vendor event going on around the edges. Mostly farmer's market kinds of booths with fresh vegetables, cider, honey, donuts, apples, etc.

This statue of two children and a sunflower...

...is only labeled as a tribute to Evelyn Taylor Price. But the sunflower is a sundial.

This statue is also very interesting. It is dated 1832, but I don't know if it's supposed to be symbolic of something, with the lion crushing the snake.

I think we walked about 3 miles because there was some wandering around in addition to just a straight walk there and back. We ate quantities of food, played more games, and tomorrow will be the Flower Show!

Miles hiked in 2025: 25.3

See Philadelphia Riverwalk Again