When the DNC announced Philadelphia would host its 2016 national convention, it was not the first time the city had been selected to host a major party’s quadrennial celebration.

The City of  Brotherly Love has hosted major-party conventions eight times, trailing only Baltimore (yes, Baltimore!) and Chicago in frequency.

Six of those eight national political gatherings held locally have been Republican events. That party’s first Philadelphia conclave happened in 1856 at the Musical Fund Hall (pictured above) on the 800 block of Locust Street. At the convention party regulars picked John C. Frémont, to whom the nomination was awarded after only a second ballot.

In 2000, George W. Bush won the conservative party’s nomination at what is now the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia.

Democrats met twice in the City of Brotherly Love, in 1936 and 1948. This from the Wall Street Journal about the 1936 convention that saw the party renominate the sitting president for a second term:

“In 1936, an estimated 105,000 people packed into the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field to hear Franklin D. Roosevelt blast his adversaries among the rich as “economic royaltists” and make his famous prediction: “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.””

In 1948, a much weaker Harry Truman received the Democratic presidential nod and gave a rousing acceptance speech at 2:00 AM at the old Convention Hall on Civic Center Boulevard in the University City area of Philadelphia. Tthe speech roused Democratic delegates and set Truman on a course toward the county’s greatest presidential election upset in history.

Source: The Wall Street Journal and Wikipedia.