{"id":234782,"date":"2026-07-03T15:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/234782\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T15:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:26:12","slug":"time-capsules-to-be-kept-in-philly-as-part-of-america-250-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/234782\/","title":{"rendered":"Time capsules to be kept in Philly as part of America 250 celebrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Keepsakes from all 50 states and every American territory will be buried as part of \u201cAmerica\u2019s Time Capsule<\/a>,\u201d in Independence National Historical Park on the Fourth of July Saturday at 8:30 a.m.. The capsule won\u2019t be reopened 250 years from now, in 2276.<\/p>\n

So, if you\u2019re reading this anytime in the next 175 years or so, you most likely won\u2019t be around for the capsule unsealing.<\/p>\n

Luckily, there\u2019s another time capsule ceremony happening in Philly \u2014 that will be opened in our lifetimes at the nearby National Constitution Center<\/a> \u2014 on Saturday at 1 p.m. in its Signers\u2019 Hall<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The five capsules filled with items selected by five families from across the nation, will be opened on Sept. 17, 2037 \u2014 the 250th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\"\"On of the \u201cAmerica at 250 Family Time\u201d capsules that will be stored in Signer\u2019s Hall of the National Constitution Center from July 4, 2026 till Sept. 17, 2037. (Nick Kariuki\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to create an opportunity for families to be able to contribute their own items of meaning to the American story,\u201d said Julie Silverbrook, the center\u2019s chief learning and content officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walk-ins are welcome for the ceremony, but you can reserve free tickets at the center\u2019s website<\/a>. Saturday will also be a free admission day at the Constitution Center, thanks to a sponsorship from Citizen Travelers<\/a>. There will also be live performances of \u201cSchoolhouse Rock Live,\u201d a recreated Revolutionary War encampment, historic reenactors, face painting and craft tables.<\/p>\n

Visitors can also trace their family histories through an interactive \u201cStories of Us\u201d Discover Center<\/a>, which opens Saturday and runs till the end of August. Doors open at 10 a.m.<\/p>\n

Families across the nation submitted videos and written applications<\/a> explaining what items they would put in the wooden boxes. There were only a couple limits on what could go in the time capsules: it had to be non-perishable\u00a0 and it needed to have meaning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The center then selected five families, from Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Nevada and North Carolina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Silverbrook also encouraged families that weren\u2019t selected to still make their own time capsules at home, and the center partnered with Scholastic Magazine with a guide on how to do it.<\/p>\n

The items the chosen families selected included a playbill for the musical \u201cHamilton,\u201d a baseball, a miniature replica of the Liberty Bell, and family letters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just something that\u2019s personally meaningful to them, but it was also reflective of the connection that they feel to the larger American story,\u201d Silverbrook said.<\/p>\n

Silverbrook said that the families will be invited back to the Constitution Center to unseal their capsules, and \u201creflect on the progress of their families and the nation in that intervening decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time 2027 rolls around, some of the children in the selected families will be voting-age adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The time capsule project will be a first for the center, as part of what they\u2019re calling a \u201ccivic decade\u201d where they will focus on reviving curiosity and engagement in civic life, institutions and learning \u2014 as the Founders had to between signing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were building a nation, right?\u201d Silverbrook exclaimed. \u201cOur first constitution was the Articles of Confederation, didn\u2019t work out, created a new system of national government. We\u2019re really defining who we were as a nation in that parallel decade, 250 years ago. And so we\u2019re really seeing this decade, 250 years later, as an opportunity to inspire civic renewal and to really reaffirm our commitment to our highest ideals and to sustaining constitutional democracy for the next 250 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. Keepsakes from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[38286,4000,564,77227,94,65349,7346,69,4001,71,70],"class_list":["post-234782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-38286","tag-america-250","tag-featured","tag-fourth-of-july","tag-history","tag-july-4","tag-national-constitution-center","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-250","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}