city lights, and she remembers the first moving stairs (in Philadelphia)

Last evening, at the Cultural Series at the Kennedy House, we were talking about Philadelphia then. "We" were the wonderful Philadelphians in a 30th-floor room, shoulder to shoulder with memory.

The wooden trolley cars. The fruit peddler. The rides an 11-year-old took on her own from West Philly to the Betsy Ross House and Independence Mall. Kensington at its height as a mill town. And then that moment when the PSFS Building opened its doors and a little girl went with her mother to ride the city's first moving stairs. Up and down and up and down they went. This brand-new wonder in a world still seized by Depression-era constraints.

The history was palpable. There were stars in our eyes.

I photographed my river, the old restored Post Office Building, and the rising FMC Tower at dusk, from JFK Boulevard, on my way to the event. The city in lights.