During the time in American history when the Gilded Age was giving way to the Progressive Age, Philip and Abraham Rosenbach were possessed by what would now and then be called a mania for collecting rare books. The Rosenbachs were collecting at a time when the world of rare books was still deeply Eurocentric, and what would have then been called modernism wasn’t really considered collectable at all. (If you’ve not seen the new documentary The Booksellers, put it in your queue now.) They took advantage of both of these misapprehensions, and when all was said and done, they amassed what was considered to be, in their lifetimes and beyond, one of the greatest book collections in the world. 

They kept a lot of it at 2008-2010 Delancey Place, in two adjoined rowhomes (the very idea of which is also known, for at least as long as I have been alive, as “the Philly dream.”) You know the rest. This locale is now The Rosenbach Museum & Library, home to the manuscript of Ulysses and one of the more formidable annual Bloomsday celebrations around the globe, the papers of Maurice Sendak, and much, much more. 

Those two homes had yards, of course, and in their time, the Rosenbachs had a garden out there. But for decades, the garden has been in disrepair. Until this week, when the Rosenbach announced that for the first time since the 1990s, the 1,600-foot garden was once again open to the public. It is beautiful. In the beforetimes, you’d be able to roll up whenever, but right now (and for the foreseeable future) you must schedule a timed visit. 

To us, this is actually more attractive. In the same way the new timed visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art do (it was so crowded back when people weren’t dying), these types of visits guarantee that you’ll really be able to take the place in, and likely in a contemplative fashion that would do all of these bodies good right about now. But “timed visit” also means “timed exit”’; in this case, that means 45 minutes. 

But that’s fine by us. 45 minutes is 15 minutes in heaven, times three.

The #Yoasis is a series of posts on this site that seek to inform the reader of places in an increasingly bustling where one may encounter a sense of calm and tranquility. Philadelphia is full ofPlaces We Can’t Understand, and we have written about those, too; as a counterpoint, a #yoasis is place in Philly that the body and spirit understands intuitively, and feels at peace. If you’ve got a #yoasis you feel comfortable sharing with us, please do by emailing us at tips[at]philebrity[dot]com.