Guided immersive theatrical experience meeting six past residents of Elfreth's Alley, inspired by 1930s-40s street theater.
Elfreth's Alley Museum is putting on History Haunts This Alley, a guided immersive theatrical experience that runs on Sunday, October 18, from 6 PM to 8 PM. It takes place right on the Alley in Old City, with the museum itself housed in numbers 124 and 126.
The show turns the street into a stage. Local actors portray six real past residents of the Alley, and as you walk, you meet them one by one. Together, their lives span 260 years of working-class history on this one stretch of pavement. The whole thing is inspired by the street theater that played out here back in the 1930s and 40s, so it's less of a seated play and more of a walk through the neighborhood's own ghosts.
If you've never spent much time here, it helps to know what you're walking through. Elfreth's Alley dates back to 1703 and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited residential streets in the United States, with the houses built between 1720 and 1836. The people who lived here were mostly artisans and working-class laborers, and the Elfreth's Alley Association was founded in 1934 to preserve the street and tell their stories. Between the 1930s and the 60s, residents and local historians fought to keep the Alley intact, led by resident Dolly Ottey; the Association eventually secured its National Historic Landmark status in the 1960s, which protected it from the construction of Interstate 95. The museum at 124 and 126 celebrates that working-class history, and this show draws directly from it.
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History Haunts This Alley was made possible by a grant from America250PA. It runs from 6 PM to 8 PM on Sunday, October 18, at the Elfreth's Alley Museum in Old City.
