Welcome William Penn | Scene Through the Lens

The park, designed by the architectural firm Venturi, Scott Brown & Rauch, was named for William Penn’s ship, the Welcome. Penn’s original grid street plan for Philadelphia is laid out as a giant marble and brick map with a small version of City Hall’s William Penn statue in the middle.

That statute became the center of a brief storm of public controversy when the National Park Service announced plans to removal Penn in favor of “an expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia.” Then suddenly reversed itself 72 hours later after a barrage of complaints.

My colleague Emily Bloch outlined how the proposed plan was completely derailed thanks to a series of tweets.

I went to photograph the statue and park just before the reversal. I’ve been there before - mostly for stories about how unwelcoming it is - along with other sites in the National Historical Park.

I ended up going back, between other assignments, two more times that day because the light wasn’t quite right, or there were no people passing through the park.

On my third visit I went up into the adjacent parking garage to make the picture at the very top of this column. It’s not the first time anyone has used a similar vantage point (like me, just a month ago).

Since 1998, a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color: