The Woodlands

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1971

In 1821, a group of Philadelphia apothecaries gathered at historic Carpenters' Hall—the same building where the First Continental Congress had met—to found a college that would raise pharmacy from an informal trade into a trained profession. Incorporated the following year, it became the first pharmacy school in the United States. Its founding reflected the young republic's broad push to professionalize the sciences and safeguard public health.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2007

Founded in 1892 by Isaac Jones Wistar, this Philadelphia institution became the nation's first independent center devoted to biomedical research, growing out of an older anatomical museum. Within its walls scientists developed important vaccines and bred the albino 'Wistar rat,' a standardized laboratory animal that spread to research labs around the world. It marked a turning point in American science, when discovery moved from lecture halls into dedicated research institutions.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2002

Established in 1855, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was the first hospital in the nation devoted entirely to the care of children. Over the decades it became a proving ground for pediatric medicine, developing lifesaving vaccines, pioneering newborn surgical techniques, and advancing treatment for childhood cancer. Its founding reflected a growing 19th-century conviction that children's health deserved dedicated, specialized care.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1995

Every spring since 1895, the University of Pennsylvania's Franklin Field has hosted the Penn Relays, the oldest and largest track and field relay carnival in the country. What began in the Gilded Age as a novel collegiate competition grew into a rite of passage for generations of schoolboys, college stars, and Olympians, whose races here set American and world records. The meet's unbroken run through wars and depressions made it a fixed point on the American sporting calendar.