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PHILLY’S FAVORITES Every year, PW rounds up a ton of stuff we love most around the city. This year, we asked our writers to take us on a tourist walk through their own neighborhoods. (And we’re also inviting you, reader, to win tickets to next month’s epic Taste of Philly—flip the page to learn how!)
The Wild West
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ne of my favorite Philadelpia monuments is the statue of Charles Dickens in Clark Park. It’s a surprisingly affecting work, with a very human Dickens looking down at a representation of Little Nell, a beloved character from his book The Old Curiosity Shop. As odd as it that a British author is monumental in a city he only visited twice, the real story of the piece is even odder. Francis Edwin Elwell was commissioned by Washington Post founder Stilson Hutchins, who planned to place it in London. Stilson’s funding fell through, but Elwell finished it anyway. Elwell submitted the finished sculpture to several sculpture competitions, won all sorts of medals and acclaim—and could find no one to buy the statue. Dickens, you see, said in his will that he wanted no statues or monuments to his life. So while many a Dickens fanatic loved the statue, they didn’t have the heart to go against the dead man’s wishes. Elwell stuck it in a warehouse here in Philly, where it remained for years. Nearly a decade after it was finished, the Fairmount Park Art Association—now the Association for Public Art—bought the statue and put it up in Clark Park, where it remains to this day, despite requests to put it in a more prominent place. The history of the piece is important, because this statue is surprisingly hard to find. Most people don’t know it’s there. I lived a few blocks from Clark Park for months before I saw the statue, even having walked past it countless times. When it I “discovered” it, I was amazed that I’d missed it all this time. It’s not a small statue, and the arrangement of Clark Park favors it. One might say that there would have to be some sort of supernatural influence to keep people from seeing it. Am I saying the angry ghost of Charles Dickens is keeping >>>