The National Constitution Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to explaining the United States Constitution. Located on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the center serves as an interactive museum and a national town hall for constitutional dialogue, regularly hosting government leaders, journalists, scholars, and celebrities for public discussions, including presidential debates. The center houses the Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach, which offers civic learning resources both onsite and online. It does not contain the original Constitution, which is stored at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia inspires active citizenship as the only place where people across America and around the world can come together to learn about, debate, and celebrate the greatest vision of human freedom in history, the U.S. Constitution. A private, nonprofit organization, the Center serves as America’s leading platform for constitutional education and debate, fulfilling its Congressional charter “to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a non-partisan basis.” As the Museum of We the People, the Center brings the Constitution to life for visitors of all ages through interactive programs and exhibits. As America’s Town Hall, the Center brings the leading conservative and liberal thought leaders together to debate the Constitution on all media platforms. As a center for Civic Education, the Center delivers the best educational programs and online resources that inspire, excite, and engage citizens about the U.S. Constitution.
The center was created by the Constitution Heritage Act in 1988. Approved on September 16, 1988, and signed by President Ronald Reagan, the act defined the National Constitution Center as “within or in close proximity to the Independence National Historical Park. The Center shall disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a non-partisan basis in order to increase the awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.”
The center is located at 525 Arch Street, an address chosen because May 25 (5/25) was the date that the Constitutional Convention began in Philadelphia in 1787 as shown in Timeline of drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution.
Ralph Appelbaum Associates designed the center’s visitor experiences and exhibition hall. The public space comprises 160,000 square feet, including galleries. The center has 75,785 square feet of exhibit space. The center is made of American products, including 85,000 square feet of Indiana limestone, 2.6 million pounds of steel, and a half-million cubic feet of concrete.
The museum’s main exhibition features three main attractions:
The first exhibit is Freedom Rising, a 17-minute, 360° theatrical production in the Sidney Kimmel Theater. The production traces the American quest for freedom.
“The Story of We the People” exhibit in the Richard and Helen DeVos Exhibition Hall is an interactive exhibition highlighting the history of the Constitution through more than 100 hands-on and multimedia exhibits.
The Signers’ Hall is a stylized evocation of the Assembly Room in the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall) where the signers of the Constitution met on September 17, 1787. The room is occupied by life-sized bronze statues.
Feature exhibitions:
The museum’s feature exhibition is Constituting Liberty: From the Declaration to the Bill of Rights, in which the center displays one of the 12 surviving copies of the Bill of Rights.
Civic education:
Through its Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach, the Center offers onsite and online civic education programs as well as a study center that develops and distributes teaching tools, lesson plans and resources. In September 2006, the center helped launch Constitution High School, a college preparatory, citywide admission school and “the only Philadelphia School District high school whose theme is Law, Democracy, and History.”
Two days after the Constitution was signed, the document’s full text was printed in a local newspaper, The Pennsylvania Packet & Daily Advertiser. A rare copy of this first public printing of the Constitution is housed at the National Constitution Center, in an alcove adjacent to Signers’ Hall. The center received its copy of the first public printing of the Constitution on September 11, 2001.