WSJ: Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Philadelphia is America’s Smallest National Park

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The Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memoria
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
The Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, named after the Polish Revolutionary War hero who spent some of his life in Philadelphia, is America's tiniest national park.

The Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Philadelphia carries the often mispronounced name of the Polish-born Revolutionary War hero and military engineer and is also the nation’s tiniest national park, writes Scott Calvert for The Wall Street Journal.

The onetime boarding house set on 0.2 acres belongs to a network of over 400 units in the National Park Service empire that includes parks, monuments, and battlefields.

The brick edifice once served as an extended-stay hotel for Kosciuszko, the trans-Atlantic freedom fighter endorsed by Benjamin Franklin, backed by George Washington, and extolled by Thomas Jefferson. He was also jailed by Catherine the Great, but her son freed him and gifted him a fur-trimmed coat that Kosciuszko later gave to Jefferson, who wore it for portraits.

With so few people knowing about him, the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial is not nearly as visited as some other national parks. Those who show up can take a no-charge, self-guided tour of the site that first opened in 1976.

“I had no idea who this was, but I just really like the national park system,” said Erin Sully, of Minneapolis, during a recent stop.

The memorial site on 3rd and Pine is where Kosciuszko crashed for five months starting in late 1797.

Read more about the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in The Wall Street Journal.

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