The strands of history, science and commerce come together in Philadephia as they do in no other American city. This is where Robert McNeil salved our pain by inventing Tylenol, and where the geeks from the University of Pennsylvania set the stage for the Internet with the giant brain they called Eniac. With the opening of the $20 million Chemical Heritage museum, Philadelphia can now boast five science museums, including the Franklin Institute, the Wagner Free Institute, the Mutter Museum, and the Academy of Natural Sciences.
Philadelphia's chemistry connection isn't new. It began with Benjamin Rush, the colonial-era polymath who was America's first chemistry professor. The city never stopped being an important research center. Yet at some point, chemists began to feel their field was losing the public's respect - no doubt as a result of the toxic effects of some of their creations.
The Chemical Heritage Foundation openly admits that the new museum is an attempt to remind people of chemistry's contributions to mankind. This public-relations subtext may explain why the exhibits, designed by the now-ubiquitous Ralph Appelbaum Associates, sometimes feel a bit disconnected from reality.
Still, it's fitting that the science museum should occupy the carapace of a departed financial institution, located in the city's historic heart, around the corner from where Ben Franklin lived and conducted many of his scientific experiments.
It has not been an easy journey for First National. Designed in 1865 by architect John McArthur Jr., who subsequently devoted three decades to willing Philadelphia's behemoth City Hall into existence, the bank was an anchor of what was America's original Wall Street.
