Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia

In honor of the United States Semiquincentennial, the Rare Book Department will be exploring items from our vast collection of Americana that reflect events, movements, trends, and voices from the past 250 years. Every month we will highlight one or two objects, from 1776 to 2026, on our social media.

We've made it to the Centennial!

On May 10, 1876, Philadelphia welcomed more than 100,000 people to the Centennial Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine–the first world’s fair in North America. The exhibition ran for six months and hosted 10 million visitors in Fairmount Park. The United States Centennial Commission constructed more than 200 buildings for the occasion with only two slated to remain when the fair closed: Horticultural Hall and Memorial Hall. A hurricane made the demolition of Horticultural Hall necessary, and the City tore it down in 1955, but Memorial Hall remains as the home of the Please Touch Museum.

The Women’s Pavilion was a late addition to the temporary structures. The Centennial Commission reallocated space in the main building and displaced the Women’s Department. Less than a year before opening, the Commission recommended to the Women’s Centennial Executive Committee that they raise funds for, plan, and construct a separate building for the exhibition of women’s accomplishments, which they did. With surplus funds raised, they published the National Cookery Book. In 2023, the Rare Book Department acquired a copy of this historic cookbook; an image of the Women’s Pavilion is on its cover in gold.

The California Gold Rush was an incredibly significant albeit short-lived moment in American history. Over the period of seven years, between 1848 and 1855, nearly 300,000 people relocated to California, looking for that mother lode. Despite being such a relatively brief event, the effects have been lasting.

The sudden influx of people from over a dozen countries across the globe, all driven by the promise of wealth, had an enormous impact on the culture, economy, and natural landscape of the United States.

The population of San Francisco exploded from 200 to 36,000 over the course of 6 years.
Famine, disease, and genocidal massacres decimated the population of Indigenous Californians. Hydraulic dredging polluted the waterways and contaminated farmland.

This diary of an unnamed gold mine operator along the Yuba River documents the daily operations of an industrial mine between 1857 and 1858 and those who labored there.

RBD AMER 1857-1858 Y9D

Next Wednesday, April 29, the Rare Book Department will be hosting artist Katie Strachan for a talk about her current exhibition in our alcove gallery. We hope you can join us from 5-7pm to hear about her work!

Katie Strachan is a multidisciplinary artist who divides her time between Asia and the US. Her clay work integrates various materials such as wax, wood and fiber to form manuscripts, sculpture, installation, and video art.

Her current exhibition in the Rare Book Department, Dollars to Donuts, explores the contradictions of the American Dream through ceramic works inspired by historic handwritten and devotional manuscript traditions, especially Pennsylvania German Fraktur. Drawing from research in rare book and archival collections, the exhibition considers how ideals such as virtue, equality, faith, and belonging are preserved, translated, and unsettled across time.

This exhibition is part of Radical Americana, a citywide initiative organized by The Clay Studio that unites 25 of Philadelphia’s arts and cultural institutions in a series of exhibitions responding to the Semiquincentennial. The project showcases research-driven work by 45 artists inspired by the history and art of 1776, 1876, and 1976, as well as the present moment. Together, these exhibitions celebrate Philadelphia’s historic role in shaping America’s cultural identity, civic life, and creative spirit, while inviting reflection and dialogue about the nation’s present and future.

Join us tonight, April 1, from 5-7pm for a chance to see John Milton's annotated copy of Shakespeare's First Folio up close!

The Free Library of Philadelphia is fortunate to have in its collections this astonishing artifact which connects two of the greatest English writers of all time, and illustrates Shakespeare's profound influence on Milton.

Events: First Wednesdays with the Rare Book Department - Shakespeare's First Folio Join the Rare Book Department for extended evening hours on the first Wednesday of every month. The Department will be open until 7 p.m. and staff will be offering tours, pop-up programs, and sneak-peaks. In celebration of William Shakespeares birthday, in April we will be pulling out our copy of Sh...