Some great news right before the upcoming Welcome to America July 4th holiday festivities get under way in Philadelphia this weekend... Shakespeare Park has finally reopened!

If you've tried to visit our Parkway Central Library over the past 2 years, then you know how difficult it has been navigating the maze of closed sidewalks, torn up streets, and fenced off parks around the Parkway Museums District in the wake of the major renovations and construction that began to take place on the Parkway and I-676 two years ago.

Walking into work today, I was shocked and surprised to see those fences taken down in the park, reopened sidewalks lined with new benches and landscaping, and a freshly paved Vine Street!

Shakespeare Park is, of course, named for the famed Bard, where a memorial created by Stirling Calder (the son of Alexander Calder, who sculpted William Penn on the top of City Hall) stands as a sculpture portrait of a morose Hamlet and Touchstone the fool, together representing Tragedy and Comedy. Fittingly, the Free Library’s Rare Book Department is home to William Shakespeare’s First Folio—and his second, third, and fourth, too!—as well as a comprehensive collection of his plays and scholarly works about his life and literary career.

What better way to soak up some summer and the reopening of the park than stopping by Parkway Central Library, checking out a good book, and enjoying some quality reading time outside on "our front lawn"? As Shakespeare might say: "Summer's lease hath all too short a date."