The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval. The museum administers collections containing over 240,000 objects including major holdings of European, American and Asian origin. The various classes of artwork include sculpture, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, armor, and decorative arts.

Cedar Grove Mansion, located in west Fairmount Park, was the summer residence for five generations of Philadelphia families. The house was built as a rural retreat from city life, and was originally located within the present day Frankford neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, about 4 mi (6.4 km) beyond the colonial-era city limits. In 1746, Elizabeth Coates Paschall purchased the property on which the house was subsequently built. Paschall was a widow with three children who had inherited her husband's dry goods business and desired a rural retreat from the city near her father's farm in Frankford. Construction of the grey stone house on a plot of 15 acres (6.1 ha) along Frankford Road began in 1748 and continued to 1750.