This is the kind of small-scale, immersing experience the 32-year-old Please Touch is so good at, and - if a first visit observing a new generation of Olivias and Noahs is any indication - has so successfully translated to a larger venue. The old standbys made the move (the SEPTA bus, the vintage Wanamaker monorail) and the improvements are huge. The heart and soul of Please Touch have survived intact and are pulsing with new life.
Parents concerned with easy access to parking and coffee will be pleased. The new venue has amenities the old one labored to fit in or lacked altogether: a large, sophisticated gift shop, birthday rooms, a sunny cafe.
And Memorial Hall's grand scale has allowed for exhibits with a wow factor that would have been physically impossible in the 21st Street location. Noise is, surprisingly, not overwhelming.
Spread out over two floors, the exhibitions are interspersed with vitrines of antique toys for antique parents. One mother I know melted on spotting a Snoopy Sno-Cone Maker familiar from childhood, and I was stupefied to learn that some toymaker had seen a need to memorialize Miss Piggy atop a tiny Muppet stage set from "Pigs in Space."
There's a lot to see, so please join me on a walking tour. Just follow the white rabbit.
LIFTING A NEW LAMP
Whimsy comes naturally to children's museums, but this one has other dimensions. The emotional centerpiece is just inside the main entrance, in the Grand Hall, where a 40-foot-high replica of the Statue of Liberty arm and torch reminds you that Memorial Hall is a remnant of the 1876 Centennial Exposition, which featured the torch from the yet-to-be-assembled monument.
Now wrought by artist Leo Sewell in juvenile flotsam and jetsam (a tin strip of a Dora the Explorer toy, a hockey stick), the arm sits in the fully restored main hall from which all the other spaces are accessible.
GET WET (above)
