New entrance makes Philly’s Seaport Museum lean toward its starboard side

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Once the project to cap the I-95 freeway in Philadelphia is completed in a few years, the north-facing entrance to the Independence Seaport Museum will face an imposing concrete wall. The built park suspended above the freeway will slope down, from about 30 feet high, to the river’s edge right in front of the museum.

President and CEO Peter Seibert is staying ahead of construction by permanently moving the entrance to the sunnier side of the building on the Delaware River. Instead of facing Penn’s Landing, visitors to the new south-facing entrance will see a marina where the pride of the museum’s collection is moored: the 1885 cruiser Olympia.

“They come in and buy a ticket, and they say, ‘How do I get to Olympia?’” Seibert said. “I can just say, ‘Look over your shoulder. It’s right there.’”

The Olympia is the oldest steel ship still afloat. It was commissioned in 1895 for service in the United States Navy. Its most famous action was in 1889, when it was the flagship of the fleet during the Spanish-American War under the command of Admiral George Dewey.

It was on her deck that Dewey, while charging into Manila Bay in the Philippines, gave the now immortal command to his gunner, “You may fire at will, Gridley.” The swift defeat of the Spanish fleet is considered one of the most decisive in naval history, turning both Dewey and the Olympia into American icons.

The popular fervor for anything and everything associated with the war hero is on display inside the museum: Dewey was put on collectible plates, bronze medallions, glass pitchers, even a side table lamp made out of a brass 50 caliber shell etched with an image of the Olympia. Dewey’s name was used to advertise soap and candied walnuts.

“He was the Taylor Swift of his time,” Seibert said.

Whereas Swift has a lyrical tendency to sink ships — “The battleships will sink beneath the waves” (My Tears Ricochet, 2020) — Dewey’s stardom was based on nautical success.

“He defeats the Spanish at Manila Bay and immediately becomes the star of pop culture,” said Seibert.

The Seaport Museum’s landlord is the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, which is leading the I-95 cap project. The DRWC funded the $500,000 relocation of the museum entrance to better connect it to amenities on the south side of the waterfront, such as the Hilton Hotel, the floating Moshulu restaurant, recreational watercraft rentals, and the popular Spruce Street Harbor Park.

“There’s a great energy that happens around the river at that point,” said Joe Forkin, DRWC chief operating officer. “It just makes so much sense for the Seaport Museum to be more directly connected to that and have a visual presence that you can enter the building in that direction.”

The new entrance is part of an ongoing physical re-organization of the Seaport Museum, as exhibition spaces are altered. Visitors entering the museum’s new access point will enter alongside the boat-building shop. Large windows allow them to watch as small boats get built by hand.

A new introductory exhibition greets visitors with highlights of the collection, including a Tin Man-like figure made of sheet metal by Philly dockworkers in the 1980s as a kind of whimsical folly; the array of Admiral Dewey pop cultural artifacts (some of which, Seibert said, were found on eBay), and a female figurehead from the bow of a ship restored, carved in Philadelphia 200 years ago.

“The river becomes this place for people, like, ‘Well, it’s where goods come and go.’ Yeah, but it was also for immigration, for people to come and go. It was where ideas came and went: It’s Walt Whitman taking the ferry across the Delaware River,” Seibert said. “It’s not just about shipping. It’s a much more complicated story.”