Picture the three-block green stretching north from Independence Hall to the National Constitution Center, created in the 1950s when the city demolished the eighteenth-century blocks that had surrounded Independence Hall on three sides. Historians have debated whether the demolition, which removed the original urban context of the founding buildings, was a preservation or a destruction. The parklike setting that replaced it feels more national monument than living city.
At the north end stands the National Constitution Center, opened in 2003, the only museum in the United States dedicated to the Constitution. Inside, the Signers' Hall contains bronze life-size statues of all thirty-nine men who signed the Constitution, positioned as they were on September 17, 1787, and you can walk among them and look at their faces. The show Freedom Rising, presented in the circular theater, is a seventeen-minute theatrical history of the Constitution that has been seen by millions of visitors.
The rotating special exhibitions explore constitutional questions that remain unresolved today. Walk the length of the mall from here to Independence Hall and consider what was built in this city in the decades between 1682 and 1800.