Bill of Rights will go on display in Philadelphia next year

Nearly two centuries after Pennsylvania lost its copy of the Bill of Rights, the state will display a copy of the founding document for the first time.

Copies of the Bill of Rights, comprising the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, were sent to each of the new nation’s 13 states.

As luck will have it, about 90 years after Pennsylvania misplaced its copy in the 1800s, someone donated one to the New York Public Library.

Some scholars think they are one and the same.

Now Pennsylvania officials have reached a 100-year agreement with the library to put the document on public display in both states.

“In the pantheon of important and, in fact, iconic documents that bind all Americans to our national government, nothing exceeds the importance of the Bill of Rights,” said Steve Harmelin, trustee of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the first host for the Bill of Rights in Pennsylvania.

The mysterious copy will spend three years on display at the Constitution Center before returning for a stay in New York.