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Join us to learn about Polish-born civil engineer Ralph Modjeski (1861-1940) who became “America’s greatest bridge build...
05/29/2026

Join us to learn about Polish-born civil engineer Ralph Modjeski (1861-1940) who became “America’s greatest bridge builder.” Modjeski furthered the use of suspension bridges and oversaw the design and construction of nearly forty bridges over the course of his career. Among his achievements was the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over the Delaware River which, upon completion in 1926, was the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Modjeski and Masters engineering firm , based in Philadelphia, is still in operation.

🗓️ Wednesday, June 17
🕰️ 6:00pm
📍The Athenæum
🎟️ Open to all. Register in advance.
🥂 Light refreshments following the talk

Presented in partnership with the Consular Corps Association of Philadelphia.

ABOUT THE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BRIDGE
Construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge – originally named the Delaware River Bridge – began in 1922 and opened on July 1,1926. The total cost of construction was more than $37 million which would amount to over $700 million today. Approximately 1,300 people worked on the bridge and were led by Ralph Modjeski, the engineer and Paul Philippe Cret, the architect. Mounted near the entrance to the pedestrian walkway (5th and Race Streets), there is a memorial plaque dedicated to 15 workers who died by construction-related incidents. Following the bridge’s opening, the main Philadelphia-Camden ferry service, a 264-year transportation link, effectively ceased operations on March 31.

This year will be 100th anniversary since the bridge opened. To commemorate this event, the bridge will be closed to traffic on July 11, 2026 and the Delaware River Port Authority will be hosting a free public celebration with live music, food trucks, rides, and family-friendly activities.

🗓️ Saturday, July 11
🕰️ 10:00am-2:30pm (rain or shine)
📍Benjamin Franklin Bridge
🎟️ FREE

Images from our Cret Collection, Lutz Collection, and Jacob Stelman Collection.

New York Times Archives: Ralph Modjeski Obituary, Ferry Closure Article

05/27/2026

Thank you and for sharing our story during your Reading Road Trip to Pennsylvania!

Watch the full episode at PBS Books YouTube channel, the PBS app, or pbs.org.

ABOUT AMERICAN STORIES: A READING ROAD TRIP | PENNSYLVANIA

Winding from Pittsburgh through the Appalachian Mountains to Philadelphia and every town in between, Pennsylvania’s story is steeped in history. From Benjamin Franklin’s contributions to our young nation, including publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack and founding the Library Company of Philadelphia, he helped establish the idea that community access to knowledge is a true public treasure. Through the years, this state has also been home to trailblazers such as Nellie Bly (Around the World in Seventy-Two Days), whose investigative reporting helped redefine how journalists uncover the truth, and Bayard Rustin (Time on Two Crosses), who advanced peaceful protest during the Civil Rights. August Wilson (Fences) brought the life of his community to the stage, while Fred Rogers (It’s You I Like) inspired generations to be compassionate neighbors.

The Keystone State continues to shape today’s literary landscape. Poets Marjorie Maddox (Seeing Things) and Dr. Raina J. León (Black God Mother This Body) use the power of language to illuminate life’s unseen struggles. Jennifer Weiner (Good in Bed) redefines so-called “chick lit” with bold, empowering stories, while Eric Smith guides the next generation through change with YA novels like With or Without You.

Discover Pennsylvania’s rich literary landmarks across this surprisingly expansive state. Browse the shelves of historic libraries like the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, explore distinctive bookstores such as Harriett’s Bookshop, Giovanni’s Room, Hakim’s Bookstore, and The Midtown Scholar Bookstore, and City of Asylum. Visit remarkable museums like the Mütter Museum, which highlights Philadelphia’s long history of medical innovation and writing.

FILMS SET IN PHILLY📍Join film historian and former film critic, Carrie Rickey, for these upcoming screenings at The Athe...
05/11/2026

FILMS SET IN PHILLY📍Join film historian and former film critic, Carrie Rickey, for these upcoming screenings at The Athenæum and stay for the post-screening discussion!

🎟️ Open to all. Register in advance.

Witness (1983)
🗓️Monday, June 1
🕰️2:00pm
⏳112 minutes

When a young Amish woman (Kelly McGillis) and her son get caught up in the murder of an undercover narcotics agent, their savior turns out to be hardened Philadelphia detective John Book (Harrison Ford).

Philadelphia (1993)
🗓️Monday, June 8
🕰️2:00pm
⏳126 minutes

Fearing it would compromise his career, lawyer Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) hides his homosexuality and HIV status at a powerful Philadelphia law firm. But his secret is exposed when a colleague spots the illness’s telltale lesions. Fired shortly afterward, Beckett resolves to sue for discrimination, teaming up with Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), the only lawyer willing to help.

The Sixth Sense (1999)
🗓️Monday, June 15
🕰️2:00pm
⏳107 minutes

Young Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is haunted by a dark secret: he is visited by ghosts. Cole is frightened by visitations from those with unresolved problems who appear from the shadows. He is too afraid to tell anyone about his anguish, except child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis).

The Floating Church of the Redeemer was a 90′ long and 34′ wide Rural Gothic style chapel built in 1849 and was usually ...
05/08/2026

The Floating Church of the Redeemer was a 90′ long and 34′ wide Rural Gothic style chapel built in 1849 and was usually anchored in the Delaware River at the foot of Dock St. in Philadelphia. This chapel was intended to be an accomodating place of worship for mariners and their families. However, the chapel only operated for a few years as the attendees suffered from seasickness, merchants objected to the non-commercial use of the dock space as waterfront commerce was increasing, and the cost of maintenance continued to rise. In 1853 it was set on brick foundations on Lower Broadway in Camden, NJ.

The chapel was built for The Seamen’s Church Institute of Philadelphia and South Jersey - originally known as Churchmen’s Missionary Association for Seamen of the Port of Philadelphia. The organization was conceived in 1843 with the mission to serve the needs of mariners in the ports along the Delaware River. The organization remains active today in service to U.S. and international seafarers who visit the Ports of Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington.

Slide 1: Lithograph of The Floating Church of The Redeemer by the architect C. L. Dennington. Part of the General Collection of Prints at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

Slide 2: Sketch of a plan, section, and side elevation for a Seaman’s Chapel by the architect John Carver (c. 1849). Part of the Thomas S. Stewart Collection at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

Slide 3-4: The interior and exterior of the first Floating Church of Our Savior, moored at the foot of Pike Street in 1844 and in operation until 1868. The Church was converted from the ferryboat MANHATTAN and presided over by the Rev. Benjamin C. C. Parker. From Seamen’s Church Institute Archives.

Read more , “The Floating Church And Its Successors Along The Delaware”

Join us for an in-depth, “off the record” discussion about the role(s) of public space in Philadelphia.🗓️Thursday, May 2...
05/07/2026

Join us for an in-depth, “off the record” discussion about the role(s) of public space in Philadelphia.

🗓️Thursday, May 28
🕰️6:00PM
📍The Athenæum
🎟️Open to members and their guests
🥂Light refreshments post-discussion

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Dr. Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta is an award-winning artist, author, and advocate who advances place, taste, and urban transformation by curating spaces of joy, justice, and genius. He currently serves as Director of at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, where he curates programs helping North Philadelphia become a beacon for art, architecture, and community imagination. Previously at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design, his collaborative leadership created the Justice and Belonging Fund, the Black Planners Society, and community innovations like the New Freedom District Cultural Plan. His research on placemaking and Black culture appears in MIT Press, the American Planning Association, and Urban Geography. His forthcoming book Black Urbanism: Palms Growing in Concrete (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2027) explores how Black artists and entrepreneurs have created cultural meccas in cities—coining critical terms like “Blacklighting” and “placesteading.” [Read full bio on our website]

Shawn McCaney leads the , the largest regional foundation in the Greater Philadelphia area, making $150M per year in grants in support of the healthy development and academic success of young children; helping Philadelphians to access and keep better paying jobs; protecting and improving natural areas and community spaces; expanding access to diverse, inclusive, and high-quality arts and culture experiences; and enabling more people to participate in democratic processes and finding collaborative ways for funders to accelerate regional improvement. Under his leadership, the Foundation has also helped to initiate major citywide initiatives, such as $600M Rebuild Initiative; Civic Vision for the Central Delaware, including the $300M/I-95 CAP project; and Civic Coalition to Save Lives, which is focused on reducing gun violence in Philadelphia. [Read full bio on our website]

We’re excited for the launch of Nathaniel Popkin’s (.popkin) new novel about political divisions in a community. Set in ...
05/04/2026

We’re excited for the launch of Nathaniel Popkin’s (.popkin) new novel about political divisions in a community. Set in the month leading up to October 7, 2023, the book follows a progressive rabbi trying to hold her interfaith community together.

🗓️ Tuesday, May 5
🕰️ 6:00pm
📍The Athenæum
🎟️ PAY WHAT YOU WISH ($10 sugested)
🥂 Light refreshments following the talk
📚Books available for purchase onsite

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PARTLY STRONG, PARTLY BROKEN (2026) is Nathaniel Popkin’s fourth novel and eighth book. He is also the co-editor of the anthology Who Will Speak for America? (2018). In the novels The Year of the Return (2019) and Everything Is Borrowed (2018) and in the book-length essay To Reach the Spring (2020), Popkin examines intersections of Jewish ideals and lived realities. Formerly a writer of criticism for the Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, Public Books, and Cleaver Magazine, among other publications, Popkin’s essays have appeared in the New York Times, Tablet, and Gulf Coast. As an American urban historian, Popkin has been a significant voice on the past, present, and future of his home city of Philadelphia, where he is co-founder, with Peter Woodall, of the public history website Hidden City and co-author of two Hidden City books, Finding the Hidden City (2017) and the forthcoming Philadelphia In Color 1950-1990 (2026). He is a producer and writer of multiple Emmy Award winning history documentaries, including Philadelphia: The Great Experiment (2011-2019), Sisters in Freedom (2018), and the ten-part series, In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America (2026). His studio, You’ll Never Forget Productions, co-founded with director Andrew Ferrett, is producing the nine-part series, For the Common Good: The Woman Who Shaped the Nation (2026).

04/27/2026

Explore the music and influences of Davóne Tines’ The Black Clown at this engaging talk with Opera Philadelphia’s Scholar-in-Residence Dr. Lily Kass.

🗓️ Saturday, May 9
🕰️ 1:00pm
📍The Athenæum
🎟️FREE and open to all
❌ Tickets to performance are not included

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
Philadelphia Premiere
An adaptation of the Langston Hughes poem by the same name
Co-created by Davóne Tines, Michael Schachter, and Zack Winokur
Presented in Partnership with ArKtype
Original music by Michael Schachter
Directed by Zack Winokur
Choreographed by Chanel DaSilva
Performed in English

Creator and opera revolutionary Davóne Tines - - brings Langston Hughes’ poem “The Black Clown” to musical life in a vaudevillian rendering of this masterpiece. Fusing gospel, opera, jazz, and spirituals into a searing night of theatrical brilliance, The Black Clown embodies the evolving, divided soul of Black America and animates a Black man’s resilience against a legacy of oppression. The Black Clown has been hailed as “pure poetry” by The Boston Globe, and The New York Times lauds “this rich, seamless production melds the past and present of African-American history into an electrifyingly ambivalent whole.” Tines makes his Opera Philadelphia debut alongside an ensemble of 12 performers in this genre-bending, visually arresting piece, juxtaposing dazzling cathartic performances with Hughes’ enduring work.

All tickets are Pick Your Price, starting at $11. Any amount above $11 helps support other operagoers and the work we present on stage.

has partnered with and Nicole Sardella to provide Audio Description for this production on May 17.

Come ready to write in this 3-hour class with Pemi Aguda (.i) where you will consider how a character’s psyche affects h...
04/22/2026

Come ready to write in this 3-hour class with Pemi Aguda (.i) where you will consider how a character’s psyche affects how they experience and interact with place, how plot can come out of place, and how place can emphasize tone and give further insight into a character’s interior landscape.  

🗓️ Saturday, April 25
🕰️ 11:00am
📍The Athenæum
🎟️ All levels of fiction writers are welcome! Advance registration required.

ABOUT THE TEACHER
’Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her short stories have won O. Henry Prizes, a Nommo Award for Short Story, a Henfield Prize, and the Writivism Prize. Her work has been supported by an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She was a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, and is the current Hortense Spillers Assistant Editor at Transition Magazine. Ghostroots, her debut story collection, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Awards in Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. W. W. Norton, Virago, and Masobe will publish her novel, One Leg on Earth, in 2026.

Photo by IfeOluwa Nihinlola.

Join us in celebrating the publication of ‘Pemi Aguda’s debut novel — an eerie mix of folklore and history — about a you...
04/22/2026

Join us in celebrating the publication of ‘Pemi Aguda’s debut novel — an eerie mix of folklore and history — about a young woman who arrives in Lagos, Nigeria and finds that something is haunting pregnant women across the city.

🗓️ Monday, May 4
🕰️ 6:00pm
📍The Athenæum
🎟️ PAY WHAT YOU WISH ($10 suggested)
🥂Book signing + post-conversation reception

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
‘Pemi Aguda (.i) is the author of ONE LEG ON EARTH and GHOSTROOTS, a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her short stories have won O. Henry Prizes, a Nommo Award for Short Story, a Henfield Prize, and the Writivism Prize. Her work has been supported by an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She was a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, and is the current Hortense Spillers Assistant Editor at Transition Magazine. Trained as an architect in Lagos, Nigeria, she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

ABOUT THE BOOK
All across the city, pregnant women are walking into water …

Twenty-three-year-old Yosoye arrives in Lagos ready to start her life. Working for a slick architectural firm, she finds a city of adventure and opportunity. Her new world is one of fancy gallery openings, glamorous friends, and all the shiny potential of the future, encapsulated in projects like Omi City, the brand-new housing development her company is building.

But Yosoye’s idyllic vision of Lagos soon begins to seem naïve, and its darker, stranger layers trouble her. Something is not right about Omi City, but no-one will give her satisfactory answers. And then, after a chance encounter in her first weeks in Lagos, Yosoye realizes that she is pregnant…

AVAILABLE IN THE US
Publisher: .w.norton
Art:

AVAILABLE IN NIGERIA
Publisher:
Art:

AVAILABLE IN THE UK
Publisher:

Art historian Zara Anishanslin () presents on her new nonfiction book, The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Ar...
04/20/2026

Art historian Zara Anishanslin () presents on her new nonfiction book, The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution. From Harvard University Press (): “The war that we now call the American Revolution was not only fought in the colonies with muskets and bayonets. On both sides of the Atlantic, artists armed with paint, canvas, and wax played an integral role in forging revolutionary ideals. Zara Anishanslin charts the intertwined lives of three such figures who dared to defy the British monarchy: Robert Edge Pine, Prince Demah, and Patience Wright. From London to Boston, from Jamaica to Paris, from Bath to Philadelphia, these largely forgotten patriots boldly risked their reputations and their lives to declare independence.”

🗓️ Tuesday, April 28
🕰️ 6:00pm
📍The Athenæum
🎟️ PAY WHAT YOU WISH ($20 suggested)
🥂Light refreshments following the talk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zara Anishanslin is Associate Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware. She is the author of the award-winning Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World and has served as a historical consultant for the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as “Hamilton: The Exhibition.”

In this four-part program, historian Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland and a specialist i...
04/18/2026

In this four-part program, historian Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland and a specialist in the American Revolutionary era, explores the fascinating origins, misunderstood purpose, and extraordinary global legacy of the Declaration of Independence. Each meeting is 90 minutes inclusive of Q&A.

🗓️ Every Monday, April 27-May 18
🕰️ 12:00pm
📍Virtual via Zoom
⏳Each meeting is 90 minutes with Q&A
🎟️ Open to all. Advance registration required.
❌ No required books for this course

ABOUT THE PROFESSOR
Richard Bell, Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, has published four books and more than a dozen articles and book chapters. He has had major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar Award and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. He received a BA from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from Harvard University.

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219 S 6th Street
Philadelphia, PA
19106

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 7pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5:15pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 3pm

Telephone

+12159252688

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