PHILADELPHIA

PHILADELPHIA. Established in 1682 by the Quaker aristocrat William Penn, Philadelphia became British North America's largest—with forty thousand occupants—and most diverse city by the middle of the eighteenth century.

Although Penn hoped to create a Quaker colony, his policy of open immigration meant that the Quaker majority of Philadelphia's early years gave way to a city of many languages, religions, and national identities. One of the largest immigrant groups was German Pietists, who established complex immigrant networks in Philadelphia. The colonies' second largest city (after Boston) in 1690, Philadelphia grew rapidly in the eighteenth century, surpassing all other colonial cities in population by 1743.

Philadelphia's involvement in colonial and transnational trade was perhaps more significant than that of any other North American city. It served as a center of both shipping and shipbuilding innovation. The city was most noted as a center of colonial culture, however. Replete with coffeehouses, philosophical and scientific societies such as the American Philosophical Society, museums, and stately homes, it embraced the intellectual and social trends of the eighteenth century with gusto. Its schools for children, especially the Philadelphia Academy, were considered the best in the colonies, while the College of Philadelphia (now known as the University of Pennsylvania) trained young scholars in Latin, Greek, medicine, mathematics, chemistry, physics and philosophy from its founding in 1755. Philadelphia's most famous eighteenth-century inhabitant, Benjamin Franklin, the originator of the idea for the college, is emblematic of this wide-ranging intellectualism, experimenting with electricity, optics, and thermal dynamics, founding the Library Company of Philadelphia and publishing Poor Richard's Almanack.

Of all its claims to fame, Philadelphia is most proud of its relationship to the Revolution. The birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution also served as the new nation's capital from 1790 until 1800.

PHILADELPHIA

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