On this Memorial Day Weekend and the unofficial start of the summer travel season, Philadelphia will be getting lots of visitors. (The city was just voted “Most Walkable City in the U.S.”in a USA TODAY Readers’ Choice Awards contest).
The best place to start for anyone traveling here is the Independence Visitor Center. I stop in all the time, often pausing at the open-walled theater (pictured above) to re-watch the free, eight-minute movie that runs all day on a continuous loop, previewing the city’s sights and sounds.
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The center also has the cleanest public restrooms in the entire city.
Speaking of restrooms and travel, for many of us in the region, all summer roads lead to the Jersey Shore.
I spent a couple of days driving not just to the rest areas, but to Shore towns from Atlantic City to Cape May, taking many of the photos for our summer guide. You can find links to most of the stories in our Down the Shore newsletter, the summer’s first. Sign up here to receive it emailed to you every week all summer for free.
Since 1998, a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:
A banner along Spring Garden Street reminded Philadelphians of Primary Election Day last Tuesday. There were a half dozen candidates running for mayor, and seven times that many seeking one of the 17 seats on City Council. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
May 15, 2023: A PATCO Speedline train headed into Philadelphia from New Jersey on the Ben Franklin Bridge passes a campaign sign on the side of a building in Old City. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer / Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
May 8, 2023: The Pennsylvania Railroad War Memorial (1950, installed 1952) by Walker Kirtland Hancock n the lobby of 30th Street Station known from the opening scene of the 1985 Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis film “Witness.“ The 39-foot monument is dedicated to the 1,307 Pennsylvania Railroad employees who died in World War II. It is known as “Angel of the Resurrection,” depicting the Archangel Michael lifting a lifeless soldier in his arms, his wings pointing directly to heaven as he frees the soldier from the flames of battle.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
May 1, 2023: From left, Two Liberty Place (1990), Alexander Milne Calder's sculpture of William Penn (1894) atop City Hall (1901), the PSFS Building (1932, now the Loews Philadelphia Hotel), and the Jefferson Center (1984, formerly known as the Aramark Tower and One Reading Center) are seen between the buildings along Market Street East.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 24, 2023: Ernest Owens, president the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, moderates a forum with the Democratic candidates for mayor (left) at the Museum of the American Revolution. The event focused on issues impacting the local Black community.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 17, 2023: Taxpayers line up outside the William J. Green Jr. Federal Building at 6th & Arch Streets for free in-person tax preparation and help offered by the Internal Revenue Service.The deadline for most taxpayers to file 2022 returns or an extension is Tuesday, April 18. By law, Washington, D.C., holidays impact tax deadlines for everyone in the same way as federal holidays. The due date is April 18, instead of April 15, because of the weekend and the District of Columbia's Emancipation Day holiday, which falls on Monday, April 17. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 10, 2023: Windows in a working public restroom (safely and securely preserved) at Eastern State Penitentiary, a former prison turned museum. It closed in 1971 and had been abandoned for decades. The National Historic Landmark has since been turned into a place where the historic preservation, interpretation, and public programs “move visitors to engage in dialogue and deepen the national conversation about criminal justice.” Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 3, 2023: Giant figures of the gods parade through an arch at the Hoyu Folk Culture Festival in Chinatown, celebrating a tradition from China’s Fujian province. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 27, 2023: The Public Services Building, headquarters of the Philadelphia Police Department and other offices, is reflected in a puddle along North Broad at Buttonwood Street. The historic eighteen-story Beaux-Arts style skyscraper and former Inquirer and Daily News building - until the newspapers moved out in 2012 - opened in 1925 as the Elverson Building and in 1996, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 20, 2023: The moon rises behind the buildings along North 33rd and Oxford Streets in Strawberry Mansion as the sun sets in front of them following a day of rain. This section of the street is named in honor of saxophonist and jazz pioneer John Coltrane, who lived there in the 1950s. The home ( just out of the frame, to the right) is a National Historic Landmark.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 13, 2023: A worker in a nearby building calls it a flame, while to some it’s a duckpin bowling pin. Seeing it in its full 51-foot size, with the accompanying six-foot-
high glob of paint on the sidewalk below, it is easier to recognize the Claes Oldenburg sculpture “Paint Torch” outside the Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts as a brush lifted into the sky “in a depiction of the act of painting a picture.” Installed in 2011, Oldenburg’s work honors the act of
painting, but its form also doubles “as a torch and a symbol of liberty in homage to the city’s historical significance as the birthplace of America,”
PAFA says.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 6, 2023: Along a wall in Frankford, where long wintertime shadows are getting shorter now as we move closer to the spring equinox (Mar. 20) and summer, when the sun’s light moves higher in the sky (making for less dramatic photographer-friendly shadows). Also, this weekend we’ll be getting an extra hour of sunshine with the start of Daylight Saving Time (Mar. 12 ) Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 27, 2023: Robert Turner, with the Capitol Preservation Committee, cleans the Moravian tiled floor after hours in the rotunda of the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg. The committee has directed numerous projects to restore, conserve, and preserve the art, architecture, and history of the Capital and other Capitol Complex buildings. The Capitol holds the largest single collection of Moravian tiles created by Henry Chapman Mercer, who founded the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown in 1899.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 20, 2023: Kory Aversa (left) pauses to TikTok as he enters the Disney100 exhibit at the Franklin Institute during a preview for the media, influencers and Disney fan club gold members. The exhibition, “celebrating 100 years of the Walt Disney Co." opened on Saturday.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 13, 2023: Repairs are made on the facade of the Pennsylvania Convention Center on North Broad Street.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
