Its history can be read as a long duel between destiny and irony, each vying to seize the upper hand in interpreting City of Brotherly Love. Thanks to its founder’s impetus, and to the furthering energy of citizens from Benjamin Franklin to Richard Allen, from Lucretia Mott to John Wanamaker, from Richardson Dilworth to Mary Scullion, Philadelphia has remained one of America’s most inventive laboratories for exploring the civic potential of brotherly love and sisterly affection. Helping Hands (c) 1998 City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program / Robert Bullock. So William Penn’s choice can sometimes seem less destiny than irony.īut that judgment is neither complete nor fair.

The most durable stereotypes about the city cluster around its fans’ penchant for booing and the colorfulness of its crime and corruption. In 1994, a Gallup Poll named Philadelphia America’s most hostile place. “City of Brotherly Love” has turned into a phrase invoked more often in sarcasm than admiration. In modern popular culture, the verdict is often rendered with a sneer. So how did it turn out, this Holy Experiment? Then Penn gave his city a street grid, a charter and a diplomatic first act that he hoped would enable it to live up to that name. The name he gave his city combined the Greek words for love ( phileo) and brother ( adelphos), setting up the enduring civic nickname: the City of Brotherly Love. What we do know is that he chose boldly, aiming for the vault of heaven, daring irony to strike.

We can’t know all the thoughts that coursed through William Penn’s mind when he chose Philadelphia as the name for his new city, tucked onto the peninsula between the Delaware River and the Schuylkill.

When naming a newborn, you feel the weight of the decision, the fond hope that the right name might provide a push along a hoped-for path.Įven as names seek to nudge destiny, sometimes they merely set up irony: Faith, the fiery atheist Victor, the embittered failure. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back.

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