Christ Church: America's Steeple

When the steeple of Christ Church was completed in seventeen fifty-four, it made this building the tallest structure in North America, a distinction it held for the next fifty-six years. The steeple still stands, one of the few large wooden structures from the Colonial Era still intact, and it was paid for, fittingly, by a lottery organized by Benjamin Franklin.

Christ Church was founded in sixteen ninety-five as the first Anglican parish in Pennsylvania, established when William Penn's Quaker colony was barely a decade old. The congregation's first church was a modest wooden structure. The present brick building was begun in seventeen twenty-seven and completed by seventeen forty-four, a Georgian masterpiece that one architectural historian called the finest colonial church in America. Robert Smith, one of the nation's earliest professional architects, designed the steeple addition in seventeen fifty-four.

The congregation that filled those pews reads like a who's who of the founding generation. Benjamin and Deborah Franklin were members. Betsy Ross worshipped here. Of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence, fifteen were members of Christ Church at some point in their lives. George Washington and John Adams both attended services here during the years Philadelphia served as the nation's capital, from seventeen ninety to eighteen hundred.

The church operates two burial grounds. Christ Church Burial Ground, two blocks away on Fifth Street, holds the graves of Benjamin Franklin, four other signers of the Declaration of Independence, and more than five thousand others from Philadelphia's colonial and revolutionary generations. Visitors still toss pennies over the fence onto Franklin's grave, a tradition whose origin no one quite agrees upon but which Franklin himself might have found amusing.

The church has held continuous services since sixteen ninety-five. It remains an active Episcopal congregation, receiving worshippers and visitors in a building that has outlasted every political arrangement it has ever witnessed.