Things to do nearRace Street Pier

Race Street Pier sits at the foot of Race Street in Philadelphia's Old City neighborhood, jutting out over the Delaware River directly beneath the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. The pier was redesigned and opened to the public in 2011 as part of a broader effort to reclaim Philadelphia's central waterfront for pedestrian use after decades in which the riverfront had been largely cut off from the surrounding city by elevated highways and industrial infrastructure. The landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, which also led the design of New York's High Line, shaped Race Street Pier into a sloped, terraced landscape planted with native grasses, perennials, and low shrubs that shift in color and texture across the seasons.

The elevated wooden deck at the pier's far end places visitors directly over the river, offering unobstructed sightlines south toward the Walt Whitman Bridge and north along the Delaware's broad curve. The Benjamin Franklin Bridge, one of the longest suspension bridges in the world at the time of its completion in 1926, dominates the view overhead and gives the pier a distinctive sense of scale and drama.

Visitors come to read, sketch, run, and gather, and the pier functions as a genuine neighborhood amenity as much as a tourist destination. The surrounding Delaware River Waterfront has continued to grow around it, with additional parks and programming adding life to the corridor across the warmer months. Race Street Pier remains one of the most thoughtfully designed public spaces in Philadelphia, a place where industrial history, civic ambition, and everyday leisure meet at the edge of the river.