The tour bus heaved and weaved through the residential streets of Mount Airy, rolling over speed bumps, slowing for passing cars, and pulling over for the occasional gawking.
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“I invite you to look around,” tour guide Marianne Ruane said, gesturing out the window as her voice echoed from a transmitter microphone into the audiences’ earpieces. The attendees murmured as they admired the homes of the streetcar suburb.
This was “Neighborhood Jawnts,” a free, hyper-localized tour running throughout a diverse swath of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods this summer and into the fall. The “jawnts” — Get it? Like “jaunts” but Philly-style — are an effort by the city’s tourism arm to engage every locale, from Africatown to the Far Northeast, in the Semiquincentennial.
“Philadelphia’s a city of neighborhoods,” said Kathryn Ott Lovell, president and CEO of Philadelphia Visitor Center Corp. and Philadelphia250, the nonprofit in charge of planning the 250th celebrations. The series is a collaboration between Ott Lovell’s organizations, with sponsorships from the city and Fulton Bank, which allow the tours to be offered at no cost.
“We wanted to make sure that people have the opportunity to get to know the whole city and to get to know the city through the neighborhoods and the diversity of our city — the cultures, the communities, the histories,” Ott Lovell said.
The tours, which began in late May and will run until October, feature a different area weekly, totaling 20 neighborhoods in the series. The tours are offered once on Fridays and twice daily on Saturdays and Sundays, and launch from the Independence Visitor Center.
On a recent Friday in July, a commandeered PHLASH bus carted about 30 people around Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy. Each tour is led by a professional tour guide — someone who gives the “play by play” — and a community host — a resident who can add “color commentary” — Ott Lovell said.
Attendees visited the French and English Villages; the country’s oldest country club, Philadelphia Cricket Club; the Wissahickon Inn; and tasted “midnight chocolate” ice cream from Mount Airy institution Zsa’s Ice Cream, all while learning about the area’s history and how architecture has shaped the community and its landscape.
“I really love how Philadelphia 2026 has been about celebrating the city as a whole, not just Old City and downtown, but all of the neighborhoods that give Philadelphia its identity,” said Philip Dawson, community host and executive director of Mount Airy Community Development Corp.
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Dawson added: “This tour really helped to highlight Mount Airy’s history, its housing and architecture, its businesses, its people, its diversity. It was really meaningful.”
Surprisingly, Ott Lovell said, Philadelphians — not out-of-towners — have capitalized on the tours. The majority of July 24 attendees were from the Philly area and most had already gone on a “jawnt.”
It was Janice Rudd’s fourth such tour. The 60-year-old recently moved from Houston to South Philadelphia and has been using the series as a way to familiarize herself with her new home city.
“I’m learning so much,” Rudd said. “It’s such a big city, there’s much to do downtown, in South Philly, out to the [Philadelphia Museum of Art], … but people just never go beyond there. … It’s nice to see real neighborhoods.”
While ambitious, “Neighborhood Jawnts” is paying off: Upcoming tours are nearly full or completely sold out with a waiting list to join, according to organizers. Ott Lovell said they’re brainstorming ways to keep low-cost and affordable tours going, past the summer of the Semiquincentennial.
“We are a city of neighborhoods and it’s something we should celebrate as much as we celebrate our history,” she said.
The “Neighborhood Jawnts” series runs until Oct. 25. Tours start at 2 p.m. on Fridays and at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tours are free, but online registration is required.
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