On the Map: Fabulous Philly – The Morris House Hotel, Walnut Street Theater, and Dining at Talula’s Garden (SLIDESHOW)
We made another two-night trip to Philadelphia, this time with our friends Phil and Jim. Since moving from New York, I’ve come to see Philly as my city, given that it’s only an hour’s drive or train ride away. And we can ride the SEPT trains for free as seniors!
There are cities you visit and cities you inhabit, even briefly. Philadelphia is the latter kind, at least when you do it right. Two nights isn’t and days aren’t nearly enough to explore everything there is to see, including the reknown murals you’ll see as you walk around, but it’s exactly enough to fall into a particular pocket of it and feel you’ve touched something marvelous.
Where We Stayed: The Morris House Hotel
The Morris House Hotel sits at 225 S. 8th Street in the heart of the city’s historic district, and it announces itself quietly — no marquee, no lobby spectacle, just a Federal-era townhouse that has been standing since the 18th century and knows it doesn’t have to try very hard. Our large bed had a mattress so soft and sinking that it’s possible George Washington really did sleep there. The staff is terrific, and we don’t say anywhere else when we’re there overnight.
The original family who built it in 1787 was part of Philadelphia’s colonial gentry, and the remnants of that world are still there: period details, a walled garden courtyard, and rooms that manage to feel both old and comfortable.
There’s a continental breakfast each morning in the library — coffee, eggs, yogurt, muffins — modest and exactly right. In the afternoons they tea. And a Keurig machine provides coffee 24/7, a great attraction for someone like me who’s often up at 5:00 am. It’
The location is the real gift. You’re a short walk from Washington Square, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and — crucially for this trip — both dinner and the theater. You never need a car. You barely need a plan.
Night One: Edward Albee at the Walnut Street Theatre
The Walnut Street Theatre has been standing at 825 Walnut Street since 1809, which makes it the oldest continuously operating theater in the United States. They announce this as their 218th seasons as if it’s just another theater that managed to survive. Once inside you know you’re in a place where American theatrical history has been made for more than two centuries. Edwin Booth performed here. The architecture is intimate and grand at once, with a sense that the walls have absorbed everything they’ve ever witnessed. The same walls that have photographs of actors who’ve performed there since the theater’s founding.
This night we were there to see Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, his 1966 Pulitzer Prize-winning play. It’s considered one of the great American plays about what we don’t say to each other, a journey into subext: the polite terrors, the comfortable lies, the unnamed dread that Albee’s characters Tobias and Agnes describe arriving like a plague at their friends Harry and Edna’s door, friends who escaped their fear by moving into Tobias and Agnes’s house. It’s a fear that never gets named but that permeates the play.
Albee was writing about middle-class American life with a scalpel he kept concealed inside elegant, precise and often cutting dialogue. The Walnut does it justice. The theater’s scale — intimate enough to feel the actors breathe, large enough for the play’s architecture to expand — is perfectly suited to Albee’s claustrophobic domestic world.
The theater is a four-minute walk from the Morris House. Which means you can be back in your room, turning it all over in your mind, in the time it takes Tobias to pour another drink.
Night Two: Dinner Inside Talula’s Garden
Talula’s Garden faces Washington Square at 210 W. Washington Square, and even dining inside, the square is present. It’s one of the city’s oldest parks, carrying three centuries of Philadelphia life just beyond the restaurant glass. It served as a burial ground during the Revolutionary War (something we learned more about on a morning visit to the Museum of the American Revolution).
Inside, the restaurant is warm and softly buzzing. Chef Aimee Olexy built Talula’s Garden around a farm-to-table philosophy that actually means something here — the menu shifts with the seasons. The food is spectacular. The service is first-rate, and the restaurant remains on our must-go list.
Why This Corner of Philadelphia
What makes this particular two-night itinerary work is that everything is within walking distance from everything else. I appreciate trips where we can park the car and not get back in it until wee head home. The Washington Square neighborhood rewards aimless walking. Colonial brickwork and Federal townhouses give way to cafés and bookshops. The history here isn’t cordoned off in museums, although there are many of them to choose from.
The Morris House keeps you in it. The Walnut puts one of the great American playwrights on stage in a theater that has operating for over two hundred years. And Talula’s Garden sends you to bed fully satisfied and wanting to come back.
Two wonderful nights. Next time we’ll make it three!
The Morris House Hotel: 225 S. 8th Street, Philadelphia | morrishousehotel.com Walnut Street Theatre: 825 Walnut Street | walnutstreettheatre.org Talula’s Garden: 210 W. Washington Square | talulasgarden.com
