Your August guide to 250th Anniversary events in the Philadelphia area

Ongoing tours

Every weekend, free bus tours known as JAWNTS explore Philadelphia neighborhoods. August highlights include a Jazz in North Philly Tour: People, Places & Events (August 14-16) and Poquessing Trail of History: Discovering Byberry’s Hidden Heritage (August 28-30). The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia just opened the Poquessing Trail this summer, so this is new to most Philadelphians. It includes four new historic sites. Get the full JAWNTS schedule here.

Meanwhile, Path to Democracy (happening through September 7) is a developing self-guided walk through Historic Philadelphia (Arch to Market and Front to 4th). Use the app to visit six prototype installations (Printers' Row, Chief Tamanend Statue, Christ Church, Betsy Ross House, Arch Street Meeting House), then scan QR codes and provide feedback that will help shape the permanent program, scheduled to launch in late 2027 with 21 stops planned. A series of markers have been placed along the route, so even without the app you can follow the path.

There are more than 30 walking tours in town. Visit Philly has the full list. And don’t forget the Mural Arts Walking Tours throughout the year.

Escape the city

Bucks County has a long list of ongoing Semiquincentennial events and exhibits, including Welcome to Yardleyville (celebrating Edward E. Robinson, first African American mayor in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, elected in 1977) at the Gather Place Museum in Yardley now through December 16. Get the full lineup at Bucks250PA.org.

Historic Newtown in Bucks County also celebrates 250 with a family-friendly festival on August 8 from 9am-4pm (here’s the map and full schedule). There’ll be a Revolutionary War battle reenactment, living historians (including Harriet Tubman), American, British, and Hession military encampments, and lots of other demonstrations, programs, music, and activities, plus a cookout.

In Chadds Ford, experience Voices of Brandywine, a new 15-minute play presented on Saturday, August 1 at two historic sites: Benjamin Ring House (10am, 11:30am, 1:30pm, and 3pm) and Gideon Gilpin House (10:45am, 12:15pm, 2:45pm, and 3:45pm). Developed with Delaware Theater Company, the play marks the Battle of Brandywine, the largest single battle of the Revolutionary War, where 30,000 soldiers fought on September 11, 1777. It draws in the writings of George Washington, Johann Ewald, Enoch Anderson, Polly Frazer, Joseph Townsend, and Benjamin Rush.” Brigadier General Anthony Wayne and a few others will be walking around for conversation. Tickets and details are here.

August highlights for art lovers

NoName Gallery
8127 Germantown Avenue

Morgan Overton: America 500
Through August 30

Instead of the last 250 years, Morgan Overton thinks about the next 250: ancestral memory, democracy, collective imagination, and Black self-determination, in a variety of watercolor, graphite, and mixed media, “collapsing past, present, and future into a shared continuum.”

Cherry Street Pier – Gallery (First Floor)
121 N. Columbus Boulevard

Loretta Parks: Solo Exhibition
August 7-30

Loretta Parks creates a site-specific exhibition at Cherry Street Pier, transforming everyday objects (bits of plastic, off-the-shelf crafts material, scrap wood) into sculptures “without following rules or logic, disregarding their original functions.” Parks likens her creative process to a child’s uninhibited imagination, “clashing textures and colors, and forming unexpected associations and tensions." It’s part of the public art series Where Freedom Flows, curated for Cherry Street Pier by Leah Triplett, curator of contemporary art at PAFA.

Cherry Street Pier
121 N. Columbus Boulevard

Born on the Bicentennial
August 7-30

Seven artists, born in the 1976 Bicentennial, reflect on the 2026 Semiquincentennial. See works by Shawn Alleyne, Anastasia Crisostomo-Dawan, Justin Duerr, Athena Astraea Scott, Keni Thomas, Michael N. Thomas, and Cherry Street Pier resident artist Bonnie MacAllister, who also curated.

Maja Park
22nd Street and the Parkway

Art on the Parkway: Franklin Thread
Through September 30

In 1747, Franklin wrote “at present, we are like the separate filaments of flax before thread is formed, without strength because without connection.” Going with this metaphor, Jeff Richards used flaxcrete, a sort of brick based on flax, to build a 375-foot “thread” to show a more organic approach to building a city environment. Richards, an architect and educator at Temple’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, says “My hope is that it brings people together and echoes Franklin’s insistence that we are made stronger by our connections to our planet, our city, and each other."

Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA)
730 S. Broad Street

“We” the People
Through October 26

This print exhibition, organized by BWA Curator Alicia DeLarge and independent curator
Zindzi Harley, draws from BWA’s collection to present a timeline from pre-1776 Indigenous people through the 1970s. There’s a map where visitors can use pushpins and string to “reflect on their own histories of migration, ancestry, and neighborhood identity.” Admission is free, but by appointment.

Michener Art Museum
138 S. Pine Street, Doylestown, PA

The Crossing: Picturing the American Revolution
Through January 10, 2027

In the spirit of the famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, The Michener has collected works commenting on Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 work through the lens of 2026. The exhibit includes works by Edward Hicks, William Francis Taylor, Charles W. Hargens, Robert Beck, Mort Künstler, Mark Thomas Gibson, Vanessa German, Kent Monkman, Flechas, and Ai Weiwei.

Heim Center for Cultural and Civic Engagement
Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia

Printmaking by the People: Posters for a Reimagined Declaration of Independence
Through August 29

This collaboration between Mural Arts Philadelphia (MAP) and the Free Library of Philadelphia is part of the largest public art project this year, Printmaking by the People. It features hundreds of posters and prints created by more than 1,000 Philadelphians in 13 neighborhoods depicting “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Exploring historic science

Academy of Natural Science
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Pay-What-You-Wish Admission / Firstival: First Scientific Society of Natural History: 1812
Saturday, August 1, 11am-1pm

The Academy offers pay-what-you-wish admission all day to America’s first scientific society devoted to natural history. In addition to the Firstival events, there’s the Dino-Mite Summer program with a hands-on paleontological dig, live bugs (the annual Bug Fest, August 8-9, is a hoot), and other family-friendly programs.

Science History Institute
315 Chestnut Street

Stories of Science: Revolutionary Ideas with Thomas Paine!
Saturday, August 15, 10am-5pm

Franklin’s friend and Colonial pamphleteer Thomas Paine (played by Dean Howarth) gives an interactive demonstration of the state of science at the time of the American Revolution.

American Philosophical Society
104 S. 5th Street

Firstival: First Slinky: 1945
Saturday, August 29, 11am-1pm

Finish out the month and head back to school with inside knowledge of the Slinky, born in a local shipyard from spare parts and precision engineering (and probably a little boredom). The event takes place at APS, the last place you would associate with a Slinky, but they do have great steps. Featuring the original 1945 blueprints of the Slinky’s design, Jenn Procacci’s Firstival sculpture commemorates one of America’s most beloved toys.

August exhibition highlights

National Liberty Museum
321 Chestnut Street

The National Liberty Museum has opened two new exhibitions. Showing Up Since 1776 traces the power of the right to Freedom of Assembly, and a related group show, The Art of Free Assembly, features work by 15 artists. Now through November 1, they’re visiting historic pubs in weekend Tavern Tours (“It’s like a history class. But with beer.”) finishing up with A Man Full of Trouble, which opened in 1759, then re-opened this spring after a 20-year break.

United States Mint
151 N. Independence Mall East

Firstival: First US Mint: 1792
Saturday, August 15, 11am-1pm

Now that the penny has been discontinued, the Harriet Tubman $20 bill has been cancelled, and the sitting President has illegally been added to a $1 coin and a $250 bill, relive the history of physical cash before digital transactions replaced everything. The Independence Hall Gift Shop sells a bag of replica currency from the 1700s.

Lits Building
8th and Market Streets

Revisit 1876
Through December 31, Monday-Saturday, 10am-6pm

While surviving the Semiquincentennial, relive the Centennial. The 1876 festival in Fairmount Park is captured in miniature in a nearly 8,000-square-foot exhibit inside this 1890 building where a teenage W.C. Fields once worked. More than 10 million visitors from 37 countries came to what was also the first World’s Fair to gape at newfangled contraptions like the typewriter, the telephone, and root beer. (The ice cream soda was created here in 1874.) Quite a few of these wonders are here, from Drexel University’s archives. See scale models of four of the main buildings and one of three remaining original three-foot terra cotta models of sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty. The show is free.

Explore Black history

Arch Street Meeting House
320 Arch Street

A Quiet Roar: The Unparalleled Lives of Bayard Rustin & Sarah Mapps Douglass
Saturdays, 11am and 12:30pm until September 7

Black Philadelphia Quakers Bayard Rustin and Sarah Mapps Douglass discuss their impact in Philadelphia in their times and beyond. It’s free.

African American Museum in Philadelphia
​701 Arch Street

Who Is Ona Judge?
Through September 7

Since the National Park Service has been ordered to remove actual history from Independence Mall, learn the true story of the woman who escaped from George Washington in 1796 at this exhibit, presented in coordination with the Ona Judge Coalition. Find out more on the AAMP site.

Tacony Library
6742 Torresdale Avenue

Philadelphia 250: An African American Soldier’s Life
Thursday, August 6 at 2pm

In this program for school-age children, an African American Revolutionary War soldier explains why he’s fighting, and what he hopes for the future (which is the students’ present).

Freedom Now Fest
Lancaster Avenue between 38th and 40th Streets
Sunday, August 2, 1-6pm

A street festival celebrating Martin Luther King’s 1965 “Freedom Now” rally and speech. Enjoy food trucks, music, art and film exhibits on the 1965 rally, crafts, and even some free medical screening resources.

Experiential learning

The Museum of the American Revolution
101 S. 3rd Street

Meet the Revolution
August 7-9

Learn how furniture upholsterers switched gears to equip the American army with uniforms and flags with public historian Kirsten Hammerstrom.

Cliveden of the National Trust
6401 Germantown Avenue

Constructing Germantown
Saturday, August 8, 10:30am-noon

Colonial Philadelphia landmarks Cliveden, the Johnson House, the Germantown Mennonite Meeting House, and the Concord School House were all built by Jacob Knorr. This walking tour explores the method and the history. It’s $20, with a $10 discount for 19119 and 19144 residents, Friends of Cliveden, and National Trust members.

Fox Chase Library
501 Rhawn Street

Philadelphia 250: Meet the Women of the 18th Century!
Monday, August 10, 2pm

A variety of women from the 18th century step out of library books to talk to school-age children about their lives.

Other events

Elfreth's Alley Museum
126 Elfreth's Alley

The Alley Book Club presents The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia’s Laboring People
Saturday, August 15, 4:30-6pm

Elfreth’s Alley is the oldest residential street in Philadelphia, tracing back to 1703, with houses dating from 1720. The “Lower Sort”, a book by Billy G. Smith, covers the lower-class workers who lived and worked in the Philadelphia waterfront area during the second half of the 18th century. It’s free with museum admission ($3 for Adults, $2 for Kids 7-12).

Highmark Mann
5201 Parkside Avenue

Milestone Mashup
Saturday, August 22, 11am-5pm

Listed as “A Free Community Expo Celebrating Music, History, Family, and Fun”, the Mashup is a family day of concerts, demonstrations, and hands-on family activities, marking 1776, the 1876 Centennial, and the opening of the Mann Center in 1976. It’s free, but registration is required.

The Sunflower Farm at Pennypack
4403 Megargee Street

Freedom and Liberty Mural Dedication
Saturday, August 7, 5:30-7:30pm

Working with Heroic Gardens’ veteran community, artist John Zerbe developed a fence-based mural surrounding the garden. Mural Arts has many more dedication events coming in August. Explore the full lineup here.

At top: Meet a reenactor playing Harriet Tubman at the Gather Place Museum in Yardley. (Photo by Cindy Fatsis.)

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