November Luncheon Speakers
November 4, 2022, Lynn Miller, co-author (with Therese Dolan) of the book Salut! France Meets Philadelphia, focused his remarks on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, as one aspect of the total story. The French were not a dominant influence. This is not a surprise, given that Philadelphia began as the direct product of English, not French, history. But all in all, the presence of the French and the heritage of France have contributed greatly to Philadelphia’s character as a cultural, educational, and commercial center. We see French influence in the prominence of its fine arts holdings, impressive public structures, elegant boulevard, and fine restaurants. The long effort that brought the Benjamin Franklin Boulevard into being produced a Parisian-style boulevard, modeled after the Champs-Elysees, from the hands of two distinguished architects, Paul Philippe Cret and Jacques Greber. It’s midpoint at Logan Square is Philadelphia’s version of the Place de la Concorde, and it terminates at the magnificent French Renaissance Revival landmark City Hall. It was Baron Haussmann’s wholesale rebuilding of Paris at the direction of Napoleon III that helped create a new vision for American cities. A “City Beautiful” movement was spawned through the Chicago Exhibition in 1893 as the American version the French Beaux-Arts architectural tradition. This aesthetic promoted highly decorated neoclassical structures surrounded by open and balanced spaces to encourage harmonious social order. The fountains, the Free Library and Family Court buildings at Logan Square; and the Rodin Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the statue of Joan of Arc, and the Barnes Museum along the Parkway follow this aesthetic. There were 22 participants.
November 17, 2022, Dr. Philip Meade, Chief Historian and Curator of the Museum of the American Revolution, discussed the Declaration of Independence: its place in history, in the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in 2026, and beyond. He positioned it as the most influential political document in modern world history, especially its fabled first paragraphs focusing on human rights and independence. We need to return to this document more often. In 2026, the Museum will be nine years old and will provide a center of meaning for the Celebration. Philadelphia has been a symbolic center of independence for the world. There have been 121 formal declarations of independence since 1991 (the fall of the USSR), most of which model the original American version. Some examples were given. In 1781, Mum Bett, a slave in Massachusetts, was emancipated with the help of lawyer Theodore Sedgwick because it was determined that freedom was a natural right, as had been stated in the Sheffield Declaration. Other examples include Simon Bolivar (formal declaration of independence of the departments of Upper Peru into a new republic in 1825), Elizabeth Stanton (helped write the Declaration of Sentiments for women’s rights), Abraham Lincoln (not as originally intended, but as interpreted by Lincoln has become the central document of our political life), Ghandi (Declaration of Independence of the Indian National Congress), Martin Luther King (King’s hopes were rooted in that powerful second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence that claims that no man by nature is ruler or the servant of another), Estonian Sovereignty Declaration of 1988 (asserted Estonia’s sovereignty and the supremacy of the Estonian laws over the laws of the Soviet Union), abolitionists treated it as a human rights document, other revolutions (French, Haitian, Chile, Italy, …). It has also sparked contradictory legacies (e.g., for and against slavery). There were 22 participants.
