Benjamin Franklin Parkway

This guide to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia measures the mile and a half ahead of you against a 1907 plan that bulldozed more than 1,300 properties, at a cost of thirty five million dollars, to carve a diagonal boulevard through the city's tight grid. The French designer Jacques Greber imagined a Philadelphia answer to the Champs-Elysees, lined with museums, academies and palaces. You'll hear how many of those institutions actually arrived after the road opened in 1918, and what the critic Jane Jacobs later made of the ones that did. Look at the traffic moving past you and weigh it against the pedestrian dream that was promised.