Councilmember Rue Landau, the first openly gay person elected to City Council, said the center builds on previous tourism outreach like the “Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay” campaign. Developed by the late Visit Philadelphia President Jeff Guaracino, the initial 2004 ads were some of the first from a U.S. destination explicitly aimed at LGBTQ+ travelers. The visitor center, Landau said, sends a similar message.
“Philadelphia is an open place,” she continued. “It’s a welcoming place. We want you to come and visit. You’re gonna have a great time. And if you guys are like me, I recruit. These folks aren’t just gonna be tourists, but they are going to end up being Philadelphians and Pennsylvanians.”
Recent census data suggests the LGBTQ+ community has roughly $1.4 trillion in annual spending power in the United States. Visit Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Visitor Center, the operators of the new information hub, are hoping to bring more of these consumers to the city during its busy 2026.
The Philly Pride Visitor Center will be open Thursdays through Mondays from noon-6 p.m. It is currently recruiting volunteers and businesses to advertise their LGBTQ-friendly events.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the center’s business hours. It has been updated.
Goldin auction house said this spring it will sell a broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence that was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, in July 1776. The company said it’s believed to be one of only 10 similar copies in existence.
Ten documents from the nation’s founding era are leaving their home at the National Archives in D.C. and hitting the skies for America’s 250th birthday.
Ten documents from the nation’s founding era are leaving their home at the National Archives in D.C. and hitting the skies for America’s 250th birthday this summer.
“These documents are either precursors to the declaration and reflect mounting frustration with British rule, or they document the declaration’s immediate result, how subjects of King George III became citizens of the United States and formed a new nation,” said Jim Byron, senior adviser to the acting archivist of the United States.
From March through August, the tour will go through the following cities:
A special Boeing 737 will carry these pieces of history.
Some of the documents that will be on display include a copy of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. It is signed by John Adams, John Jay and Benjamin Franklin
“I always think of the Declaration of Independence as like the breakup letter,” said Jessie Kratz, a historian with the National Archives. “But this is the final divorce papers that acknowledged the United States as a country and also gave the borders so we could actually expand westward. So this was the first time that Britain actually recognized our independence.”
The oaths of allegiance by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr will also be a part of the display.
“The Continental Congress decided that they needed to have all army officers sign oaths of allegiance to the United States,” Kratz said. “They sent all these preprinted forms to Valley Forge to have George Washington get all the officers to sign.”
Other documents going on tour include a secret printing of the Constitution in draft form and an original engraving of the Declaration of Independence.
“The Freedom Plane National Tour underscores that the rich history of our nation belongs to all of us, not just those Americans living in or visiting Washington, D.C.,” said Rodney Slater, chair and president of the National Archives Foundation Board of Directors.
The exhibition will be free at all eight venues.
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It has been years of planning and executing, but now the majority of the largest renovation ever at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate is complete just in time for the nation’s 250th birthday.
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George Washington’s home sees major upgrades
It has been years of planning and executing, but the majority of the largest renovation ever at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate is complete just in time for the nation’s 250th birthday.
“If you go in the house right now, it looks more like the house that George Washington knew the time they lived there than ever before in its history,” said Doug Bradburn, the president and CEO of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
For the past few years, visitors have only seen sections of the first president’s home while deep foundational issues were repaired and restored.
“The house was originally built in the 1730s, made out of wood and added to kind of piecemeal over time,” Bradburn told WTOP. “It’s a complicated house. It certainly never intended to last for almost 300 years.”
Washington’s home had fallen into disrepair until the site was taken over by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association in 1860.
They decided to make the home look like a snapshot of 1799, the last year the first president was alive.
“This was a place that was designed by George Washington. It was his intention to have it look a certain way,” Bradburn said. “And so by 1799, we see that as the fullest expression of his hopes and dreams for Mount Vernon that he was able to achieve within his lifetime.”
That includes 19th and 20th century brick pillars in the cellar that had been holding up the house as it sagged over the years. Those are being removed as they continue to refurbish the cellar, which will be opened to visitors for the first time in the coming year.
This mansion revitalization project is the largest that Mount Vernon has ever undertaken. The project closed much of the house over the past two years, holistically repairing the drainage, framing and the foundation as well as adding a new HVAC system that will help with moisture issues.
“The most difficult challenge and the one that took up much of the seven-year planning process was how we were going to hold the house in place,” said Thomas Reinhart, the director of preservation at Mount Vernon.
The bottommost part of the wall frame had to be replaced without moving the house.
What they used were steel beams that weighed equal to the presidential mansion that allowed them to cantilever the house.
“They were literally balancing those steel beams on a center point to keep the house exactly level and exactly in space,” Reinhart said about the engineering marvel.
George and Martha Washington’s bedroom.
(Luke Lukert/WTOP)
Luke Lukert/WTOP
The bed that George Washington died in was reinstalled while the Mount Vernon estate was closed for restoration.
(Luke Lukert/WTOP)
Luke Lukert/WTOP
The parlor room in George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
(WTOP/Luke Lukert)
WTOP/Luke Lukert
The majority of the largest renovation ever at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate is complete.
(Luke Lukert/WTOP)
Luke Lukert/WTOP
Not only are they tasked with renewing this house, they are also undertaking the renovation using period accurate methods and materials.
“It may look like we’re actually taking steps backwards by using linseed oil paint and using materials and techniques that were that were used to actually build the house in the 18th century,” Reinhart said. “But we’re finding through an assessment of the process of preservation over the last 170 years, that those were the most effective ways to deal with this house and to make it the most healthy and to give it the best chance of surviving indefinitely.”
Restoration specialists also took the time to make certain rooms in the home more historically accurate.
“The bedchamber is really the pièce de résistance,” Bradburn said about the Washingtons’ bedroom.
What once was white walls is now richly decorative wallpaper. The new baby blue wallpaper with flower and bird themes was found in another house in New Jersey. The original owner of that home had purchased wallpaper from the same dealer as the Washingtons.
“There’s a good chance that this was very like the paper that would have been in here,” Reinhart said.
The original bed and French writing desk of Martha Washington is in the room as well.
While a majority of this monumental project wrapped in December, work on Mount Vernon truly never ends for Reinhart and other preservationists. Already talk of repainting and refurbishing the “New Room” is underway.
“To work in preservation at Mount Vernon is an honor,” Reinhart said. “I’m not going to pull any punch — It’s the most important house in America, and it’s the home of arguably the most important person in the history of this country. So, to be asked to care for it is a great honor.”
Democracy is a powerful and dangerous force, as America and the European democracies are discovering. Elites on both sides of the Atlantic haven’t done a very good job of handling it.
We have some anniversaries coming up next year that may help us. We have, of course, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The same day is the bicentennial of the deaths of the two founders most responsible for that great document, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration is vital to understanding who we are as Americans.
