Revolutionary Philadelphia: Seeing the Present in the Past

How do you make history come alive for modern-day audiences? People of the Revolutionary era, especially everyday people, and their lives can seem so distant to those in the 21st century. One way the Museum has done this is an annual living history event, first known as Occupied Philadelphia, and now as Revolutionary Philadelphia. This event recreates a marketplace, soldiers’ encampment, and other places that would have been familiar to Revolutionary-era citizens, allowing visitors to feel like they are traveling back in time to the 1700s.

The Museum’s fall living history events began in October of 2017, recreating the British occupation of Philadelphia in 1777. The event was conceived to tell a Philadelphia-specific, unique story about the American Revolution that visitors may not have heard before, and that would stand out from the many other historical offerings in Old City Philadelphia. It also aimed to build empathy for people in the 18th century by encountering them as real individuals; this was especially true of the British soldiers involved in the occupation, allowing visitors to encounter them as people, as opposed to the simplified enemies they are often depicted as. Occupied Philadelphia ran until the fall of 2025, when the Museum shifted to Revolutionary Philadelphia and focused on the fall of 1775 to take advantage of the 250th anniversaries of events that happened here.

The 2026 iteration of the event, Revolutionary Philadelphia: 1776, will recreate the fall of 1776, months after the Declaration of Independence was signed. The event will feature  over 50 costumed interpreters moving through multiple spaces – the Museum’s plaza, the green space next to the First Bank, and Carpenters’ Hall.  The Museum recruits and trains these guest stars and works with them to develop interpretation specific for the Revolutionary Philadelphia event. Some interpreters will portray actual individuals from the era, such as Elizabeth Drinker, while others depict soldiers or craftspeople. Interpreters choose who they will portray, and the Museum assists with historical context and supplemental research to help them with life in the fall of 1776. There are designated areas to the event – the Plaza recreates a marketplace, for example – but the event remains fluid (much like the actual city would have been in the 18th century). While some interpreters stay in a specific area, others move around between spaces, alerting guests to other parts of the event that they may not have been aware of.

These living history events bring the Museum’s work outside the building to a place that’s more accessible to all; for any number of reasons, people may feel like visiting a museum isn’t an option for them. By bringing the era to life outside the Museum’s walls, it engages more people and allows them to see the American Revolution, and the people who lived through the war years, in a new way. Meg Bowersox, Gallery Interpretation Manager at the Museum, who coordinates the event, puts it this way: “I think this event provides a lot of opportunities for people to see the present in the past and to allow for people to become more understanding of others and where they might be coming from. The way people develop perspectives is based on their experiences, and not everybody has the same experiences that end up creating the person that they are. So I think this is an opportunity to learn how complicated and messy the Revolution was and is. Our lives today are messy, and they’re confusing, and guess what? It was confusing and messy in the 18th century.”