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Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Benjamin Franklin Parkway, commonly abbreviated to Ben Franklin Parkway and colloquially called the Parkway, is a boulevard that runs through the cultural heart of Philadelphia. Named for founding father Benjamin Franklin, the mile-long Parkway cuts diagonally across the grid plan pattern of Center City's northwest quadrant. It starts at Philadelphia City Hall, curves around Logan Circle, and ends before the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Attractions The Parkway is the spine of Philadelphia's Museum District. Some of the city's most famous sights are here: Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul; Swann Memorial Fountain; Parkway Central Library, the Family Court Building, the Franklin Institute, Moore College of Art and Design, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Rodin Museum, Eakins Oval, the Barnes Foundation and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. From its northern end, the Parkway provides access to Fairmount Park through Kelly Drive (formerly East River Drive), Martin ...
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Jacques Gréber
Jacques-Henri-Auguste Gréber (10 September 1882 – 5 June 1962) was a French architect specializing in landscape architecture and urban design. He was a strong proponent of the Beaux-Arts style and a contributor to the City Beautiful movement, particularly in Philadelphia and Ottawa. Early life and education Gréber was born in Paris, the son of sculptor Henri-Léon Gréber, and attended the École des Beaux-Arts in that city.E. Delaire ''et al.'' ''Les architectes élèves de l'école des Beaux-Arts, 1793–1907'' noted in James T. Maher, ''The Twilight of Splendor: Chronicles of the Age of American Palaces'' 1975:65 note 78. He was a fine student and won several prizes during his training at the École. Early Private Commissions Following graduation in 1908, he left for the United States, where American architects who had trained at the École hired him to help design French gardens for the large houses they built in New England. He designed many private gardens in the U ...
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Swann Memorial Fountain
The ''Swann Memorial Fountain'' (also known as the ''Fountain of the Three Rivers'') is an art deco fountain sculpture located in the center of Logan Circle in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.Hayes, Margaret Calder, ''Three Alexander Calders'', Paul S Eriksson Publisher, Middlebury, Vermont, 1977 p 162 The fountain, by Alexander Stirling Calder designed with architect Wilson Eyre, memorializes Dr. Wilson Cary Swann, founder of the Philadelphia Fountain Society. The Society had been planning a memorial fountain in honor of its late president and founder. After agreeing that the fountain would become city property, the society was granted the site in the center of Logan Circle. Adapting the tradition of “river god” sculpture, Calder created large Native American figures to symbolize the area's major streams, the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and the Wissahickon. The young girl leaning on her side against an agitated, water-spouting swan represents the Wissahickon Cre ...
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Gates Of Hell
''The Gates of Hell'' (french: La Porte de l'Enfer) is a monumental bronze sculptural group work by French artist Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from the ''Inferno'', the first section of Dante Alighieri's ''Divine Comedy''. It stands at 6 metres high, 4 metres wide and 1 metre deep () and contains 180 figures. The figures range from high up to more than one metre (3 ft). Several of the figures were also cast as independent free-standing statues. History The sculpture was commissioned by the Directorate of Fine Arts in 1880 and was meant to be delivered in 1885. Rodin would continue to work on and off on this project for 37 years, until his death in 1917. The Directorate asked for an inviting entrance to a planned Decorative Arts Museum with the theme being left to Rodin's selection. Even before this commission, Rodin had developed sketches of some of Dante's characters based on his admiration of Dante's ''Inferno''. The Decorative Arts Museum was ne ...
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Auguste Rodin
François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, and deeply pocketed surface in clay. He is known for such sculptures as ''The Thinker'', ''Monument to Balzac'', '' The Kiss'', ''The Burghers of Calais'', and ''The Gates of Hell''. Many of Rodin's most notable sculptures were criticized, as they clashed with predominant figurative sculpture traditions in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory. He modeled the human body with naturalism, and his sculptures celebrate individual character and physicality. Although Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, he refused to change his style, and his continued output brought increas ...
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The Thinker
''The Thinker'' (french: Le Penseur) is a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ..., usually placed on a stone pedestal. The work depicts a Heroic nudity, nude male figure of heroic size sitting on a rock. He is seen leaning over, his right elbow placed on his left thigh, holding the weight of his chin on the back of his right hand. The pose is one of deep thought and contemplation, and the statue is often used as an image to represent philosophy. Rodin conceived the figure as part of his work ''The Gates of Hell'' commissioned in 1880, but the first of the familiar monumental bronze castings was made in 1904, and is now exhibited at the Musée Rodin, in Paris. There are also 27 other known full-sized Casting, castings, in which the figu ...
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Interstate 76 (east)
Interstate 76 may refer to: Interstate Highways in the United States * Interstate 76 (Colorado–Nebraska) * Interstate 76 (Ohio–New Jersey), running through Pennsylvania Video gaming * ''Interstate '76 ''Interstate '76'' is a vehicular combat video game for Microsoft Windows. It was developed and published by Activision and released on March 28, 1997. Plot The game opens in the Southwestern United States in an alternate history of the year 1 ...'', a vehicular combat video game for Windows {{road disambiguation 76 ...
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Schuylkill Expressway
The Schuylkill Expressway , locally known as "the Schuylkill", is a Controlled-access highway, freeway through southern Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Montgomery County and the city of Philadelphia in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, and the easternmost segment of Interstate 76 (east), Interstate 76 (I-76) in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It extends from the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Valley Forge exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, King of Prussia, paralleling its namesake Schuylkill River for most of the route, southeast to the Walt Whitman Bridge over the Delaware River in South Philadelphia. It serves as the primary corridor into Philadelphia from points west. Maintenance and planning are administered through Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) District 6, with the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) maintaining the approach to the Walt Whitman Bridge. Constructed over a period of ten years from 1949 ...
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Schuylkill River Trail
The Schuylkill River Trail ( , ) is a multi-use trail along the banks of the Schuylkill River in southeastern Pennsylvania. Partially complete as of 2018, the trail is ultimately planned to run about from the river's headwaters in Schuylkill County to Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia. Completed portions of the trail include a section from Auburn to Hamburg, a portion from Reading to Pottstown, and a portion from Oaks to South Street in Center City Philadelphia. Large stretches of the trail are rail trails. Parts of it belong to the East Coast Greenway, a 3,000-mile trail system connecting Maine to Florida. On many maps and street atlases, and on some of the trail's signage, the segment between Philadelphia and Valley Forge is still identified by the older name ''Philadelphia–Valley Forge Trail''. Trail description Auburn to Pottstown The Schuylkill River Trail begins at a trailhead at the Kernsville Dam in Auburn just above Hamburg. The trail runs through Reading to Po ...
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Barnes Foundation
The Barnes Foundation is an art collection and educational institution promoting the appreciation of art and horticulture. Originally in Merion, the art collection moved in 2012 to a new building on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The arboretum of the Barnes Foundation remains in Merion, where it has been proposed to be maintained under a long-term educational affiliation agreement with Saint Joseph's University. The Barnes was founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, who made his fortune by co-developing Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound that was used to combat gonorrhea and inflammations of the eye, ear, nose, and throat. He sold his business, the A.C. Barnes Company, just months before the stock market crash of 1929. Today, the foundation owns more than 4,000 objects, including over 900 paintings, estimated to be worth about $25 billion. These are primarily works by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist masters, but the collection al ...
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Rodin Museum
The Rodin Museum is an art museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that contains one of the largest collections of sculptor Auguste Rodin's works outside Paris. Opened in 1929, the museum is administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum houses a collection of nearly 150 objects containing bronzes, marbles, and plasters by Rodin. In 2012, the museum re-opened after a three-year, $9 million renovation that brought the museum back to its original vision of displaying Rodin's works. Founding The Museum was the gift of movie-theatre magnate Jules Mastbaum (1872–1926) to the city of Philadelphia. Mastbaum began collecting works by Rodin in 1923 with the intent of founding a museum to enrich the lives of his fellow citizens. Within just three years, he had assembled the largest collection of Rodin's works outside Paris, including bronze castings, plaster studies, drawings, prints, letters, and books. In 1926, Mastbaum commissioned French architects Paul Cret and Jac ...
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Academy Of Natural Sciences
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1812, by many of the leading naturalists of the young American republic with an expressed mission of "the encouragement and cultivation of the sciences". It has sponsored expeditions, conducted original environmental and systematics research, and amassed natural history collections containing more than 17 million specimens. The Academy also organizes public exhibits and educational programs for both schools and the general public. History During the first decades of the United States, Philadelphia was the cultural capital and one of the country's commercial centers. Two of the city's institutions, the Library Company and the American Philosophical Society, were centers of enlightened thought and scientific inquiry. The increasing sophistication of the earth and life scie ...
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Moore College Of Art And Design
Moore College of Art & Design is a Private college, private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its undergraduate programs are available only for female students, but its other educational programs, including graduate programs, are co-educational. History Founded in 1848 by Sarah Peter, Sarah Worthington Peter as the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, it was the first women's art school in the United States. The school was established to prepare women to work in the new industries created during the Industrial Revolution of which Philadelphia was a center. The school occupied the Edwin Forrest House, Edwin Forrest Mansion at 1326 North Broad Street from 1880 to 1960. The first principal of the school was Anne Hill, who held the position from 1850 to 1852. She was followed by the artist Thomas Braidwood (1855-1873), who probably left due to disagreements with John Sartain, who served as Director for 28 years. Elizabeth Croasdale took over as principal from 1873 to ...
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