Seaport Museum exhibit will explore the history of life and work on the Delaware riverfront

If the Delaware could speak, what tales it would tell?

Many of those stories will be revealed in a new exhibit called “At the Water’s Edge: Working and living along the Delaware River” at the Independence Seaport Museum.

Opening April 14, it will be the first exhibit of the museum’s new Richard C. von Hess Foundation Gallery, on the museum’s second floor.

“The way I think about it, the water’s edge is where Philadelphia was born,” said Craig Bruns, chief curator of the museum.

Through artworks and artifacts never before displayed, along with interactive exhibits, guests will learn about the people who lived and worked along the river, including Native Americans, enslaved people, sailors, ironworkers, and immigrants. The exhibit also focuses on the rise of transportation and commerce along the river’s banks.

The exhibition spans from early Native American settlement along the Delaware to the mid-1900s, and includes items like a sea chest from the ship Empress of China, built shortly after the Revolutionary War. It was the first American ship to make it to China, said Bruns.

“We have some drawings by Paul Philippe Cret who designed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the University Avenue and Penrose Avenue Bridges,” Bruns said. “Those are actual drawings he made for those projects.” Also in the collection are prints of portraits of two Lenni Lenape chiefs.

Not glossing over the grim history of slavery, “At the Water’s Edge” will include a portrait of Alice, an enslaved woman who operated Dunk’s Ferry for 40 years. The ferry transported cargo, passengers, and wagons between what is now Neshaminy State Park in Pennsylvania to Edgewater Park in New Jersey..

The exhibit also includes a manilla, a copper bracelet used as currency in West Africa and by European slave traders to buy African slaves. This manilla, said Bruns, was found during the construction of I-95, having been buried for many years in sediment.

There will also be exhibits of Philly pride.

“You are now entering the greatest shop in the universe,” boasts a sign from an industrial shop when the Philadelphia Navy Yard was bustling. On the other side, in case one missed the message, the sign reads, “You are now leaving the greatest shop in the universe.”

The objects and artworks in “At the Water’s Edge” intend to provide guests a tangible feel for the past.

“They can transport us back in time,” said Bruns. “They’re little time machines, each one of them, if you’re willing to take the journey with the piece, take some time and understand its context.”

In doing so, visitors may walk away with a greater appreciation of their river.

“At the Water’s Edge” will run through May 2025 at Independence Seaport Museum, 211 S. Columbus Blvd., Phila.