Parkway 100 Celebration

The Benjamin Franklin Parkway, one of the finest examples of bold civic planning in the United States, is celebrating its Centennial (“Parkway 100”), 2017-2018.

Plans for a grand “Fairmount Parkway” date back to 1892. Ground was broken for the massive project in 1907, and in 1917, Philadelphia’s leaders formally adopted French urban planner Jacques Gréber’s Parkway design, emulating the Champs-Élysées in Paris. On October 26, 1918, the Parkway was officially open to traffic end to end. In 1937, the name of the Fairmount Parkway was changed to honor the city’s most celebrated citizen, Benjamin Franklin.

The Parkway 100 celebration kicked off with the “We Are Connected Festival” (a cultural open house) on September 8, 2017, and continues through the "Parkway Soirée" on October 26, 2018. Be sure to join us for the Soirée, where you can dance, eat, toast and play - all in celebration of the 100th birthday of our beautiful Parkway!