A reader recently tipped us off about the still-being-planned Philadelphia Wax Museum, a tribute to Philadelphia’s most famous and influential. The vision behind the museum is, as you may imagine, to represent such luminaries as William Penn, Bill Cosby, and Reggie White in full-sized waxy glory to educate visitors about their roles in Philadelphia history. In addition, the museum will operate “for the relief of the poor, the distressed, and underprivileged and for the advancement of education, historical, cultural awareness for the Great Philadelphia Region, all while lessening the burdens of government.” So, yeah.

Looking at their Facebooke page, it seems they’re dreaming big. It also seems that they have a lot of time to update their Facebook page.

Rendering of the museum

Another rendering

A peek inside

After digging through a month of wall posts on Facebook, we learned that the plan is for this museum to go up on Delaware Ave., at Reed Street, which we think was supposed to be part of the Foxwoods site.

The site, we think

We can certainly get behind the idea of a museum dedicated to celebrating famous Philadelphians in history, though we confess we’re a little creeped out by the wax factor. What we’re a little less certain about is the viability of what looks like a multi-million dollar museum on a multi-million dollar parcel (okay, we’re certain that it isn’t viable). Unless there’s some extremely wealthy wax-loving Philadelphia-phile benefactor out there somewhere, we can’t fathom how this non profit will be able to raise the necessary dollars to do anything close to what they want to do.

In the meantime, might we suggest thinking a little smaller, perhaps renting a small space off the Ben Franklin Parkway, near the other museums in town? And if the crowds come out to see Patty LaBelle or John Doman in wax form, just maybe the palace by the river could become a reality.