Editor’s Note: A version of this story was published in the Winter 2024 issue of Extant, a publication of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.
Name: USS Olympia
Location: 211 Columbus Boulevard, Penn’s Landing
Builder: Union Iron Works, San Francisco
Built: 1892
Generations of Philadelphians recall their grade-school field trip to the floating historical artifact, the USS Olympia. Moored on the Delaware River at Penn’s Landing since 1957, the vessel is under the stewardship of the Independence Seaport Museum. It is a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but has yet to be included on the Philadelphia Register.
USS Olympia’s place in history is secured. The cruiser was deployed in 1898 under Commodore George Dewey to the Battle of Manila Bay, where Dewey uttered the command, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” and proceeded to defeat the Spanish fleet. The world’s oldest steel warship served as a symbol of American naval power until it was decommissioned in 1922 and has survived as a waterfront museum since 1957.
Unsuccessful attempts to preserve USS Olympia’s neighbor downriver, the SS United States, show the need to protect this other maritime icon through designation on the city’s historic register.
I like that ship. Problem is to whom is the ship belonging to? The Navy or Philadelphia? If it was the Navy, it would be scrapped. And the Navy took care on New Jersey from WW2 by moving it to a berth where it was given a loving spray gray paint job before being moved back to its birth.
Olympia’s Wiki entry: n 1957, the U.S. Navy ceded title to the Cruiser Olympia Association, which restored the ship to her 1898 configuration. Since then, Olympia has been a museum ship in Philadelphia, where it is now part of the Independence Seaport Museum. Olympia was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
If the entry is correct, neither the Navy nor the city owns the ship. When I was young I saw her, still in “battleship grey” paint, pierside in the Navy Yard’s Reserve Basin. Later berthed beneath the Delaware River/Ben Franklin Bridge, visible from the El. I was aboard during the centennial of the Battle of Manila Bay ceremony.