Elsfreth’s Alley in Philly’s Old City has two big claims to fame: One really old and one much more recent.

First, the really old one. It’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited residential streets in the nation, dating back to 1703. That’s why over 300,000 tourists from around the world, according to the alley’s museum, come to see it each year.

The more recent factoid happened this century, and isn’t so positive. On Aug. 1, 2015, hitchBOT, a Canadian hitchhiking robot, was found decapitated at the top of the alley, cutting short its planned journey from Boston to San Francisco after just two weeks.

No charges were filed, no culprits were found. For 10 years not much mention of hitchBOT really happened, except to lump it in with other tales of Philadelphians behaving badly, or as a cautionary tale ahead of Waymo’s arrival in Philly.

So there was some surprise — and excitement — when the Elfreth’s Alley Museum announced that its October First Friday event would be all about hitchBOT. 

Maiti Gallen, an Elsfreth’s Alley board member, guides people through the activities during the Elsfreth’s Alley Museum’s “Remembering HitchBOT” event. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)

About 550 people showed up to commemorate hitchBOT, a record First Friday turnout for the museum.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had a line before opening at a First Friday before,” said Susan Poulton, the event’s organizer and vice president of the board of directors of the Elfreth’s Alley Association, and a resident on the alley. “Just in the first 45 minutes, we had 100 people come in.”

Old City residents Jefferson Ta and Jacob Joseph were Drexel undergrads back in 2015. When they heard about the event, they were astounded and amused that the commemoration was happening, and had to come check it out.

Old City residents Jefferson Ta (left) and Jacob Joseph got creative with their robot ornaments at the “Remembering hitchBOT” event. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)

Joseph said the hitchBOT incident felt pretty “on-brand” for the city.

“If anyone was going to beat up a hitchhiking robot anywhere in this world, it would be Philadelphia,” he said. “We wear it with a badge of honor a little bit. But, right now, we’re just commemorating it. We’re sad that it happened, but we’re happy that we’re commemorating the moment in Philadelphia history.”

Attendees at the Elfreth’s Alley Museum’s “Remembering hitchBOT” event got to make their own robots with various activities. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)

The event included activity stations, where guests could build their own mini hitchBOT with a cardboard box and crafting supplies, or color a robot ornament with markers. Robot kits to build a solar-powered cart were available as well, along with temporary tattoos and stickers of hitchBOT and various other cartoon automatons. 

“People are loving it,” said Maiti Gallen, an Elsfreth’s Alley board member who was guiding the crafting stations. “It’s a different crowd, which is what the First Friday is meant to do, bring other people in. Elsfreth’s Alley isn’t just about history. It’s about the people. It’s about the events in the city, and we just want people to experience it any way they want to.”

Chrissie O’Brien decorates a robot ornament to look like hitchBOT at the Elsfreth’s Alley Museum’s First Friday event commemorating the hitchhiking robot. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)

Among the free snacks and drinks on offer was beer provided by Human Robot Brewery. Guests also had free access to the museum and its gift shop — two adjacent houses on the street — which Poulton said also saw increased foot traffic and sales. 

The idea for the commemoration began with an April Fool’s post by Jeff Winner, a music and film producer who runs the popular social media accounts Old Cilly and lives in the neighborhood.

“Everyone thought it was real,” Poulton said, “and so, I thought, why not make that a great First Friday topic?” 

In preparing for the event, Winner and Poulton got in touch with the creators of hitchBOT, Canadian professors David Harris Smith and Frauke Zeller, to get more insights and updates to the story.

While there was no new info on how the robot met its grizzly end, there was plenty of details that 2015’s coverage glossed over. Like …

  • Did you know there were two hitchBOTs? The first one made a successful journey across Canada and now resides — fully intact — in a permanent exhibit at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. 
  • The Second hitchbot successfully completed two separate journeys around Germany and the Netherlands in 2015, months before the doomed Philly visit. It’s now at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum in Paderborn, Germany — minus its head, which has never been recovered.

Lindsay Ouellette came to the event more informed than most. The PhD student at Temple University has been studying robot abuse for the past two years and is preparing to defend her dissertation on the subject in about six weeks.

“HitchBOT is very famous and is in every single research article about robot abuse since,” she said. “The reason that I got into this is because people started sending me videos on Instagram with people beating up robots. So I looked it up … Turns out, it actually is a thing, and so I wanted to know more about it.”

Temple PhD student Linsday Ouellette came with Will Ellerbe to the “Remembering hitchBOT” event at the Elfreth’s Alley Museum. Ouellette, maybe coincidentally, will be defending her dissertation on robot abuse in a few weeks. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)

Ouellette said one common goal in robotics is to try and make them more humanoid. This was the case for hitchBOT: It had colourful yellow gloves and boots on its arms and legs, which were nonfunctional but made it look more like a small child.

Ouellette says she has found that looking more like a person doesn’t spare robots from abuse, though. 

“One of the things that I found, is that maybe it’s not how we make a robot look like a human, but how do people think about robots … perhaps the question should be, how do we make robots more accepted, rather than how human-like they are,” she said.

Ten years on, it seems Philly has warmed to hitchBOT, at least. Winner and Poulton both said they would be open to more hitchBOT events in the alley in the future, maybe as another First Friday, one of the street’s makers series events, or even an annual festival. Before the event, Winner told Billy Penn he dreamed that hitchBOT could gain enough traction to be on the same level as Groundhog Day’s Punxsutawney Phil, with an annual “Rust in Peace” festival drawing folks from near and far.

Irina Khrapatina, with her dog Coffee, shows off her temporary tattoo at Elsfreth’s Alley Museum’s First Friday event commemorating the hitchBOT. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)

“This would be a perfect fit for Elsfreth’s Alley in the future, so if we could make that happen. It’d be great,” Poulton said. 

Perhaps one day, hitchBOT — what’s left of the second bot, at least — could return to Philly, on loan to an organization like the Franklin Institute.

“I think if anything we’ve learned tonight, it’s that this is a great story for the city, and not necessarily in a bad way,” Poulton said. “While I think it’s up there with snowballs and Santa Claus, it’s actually kind of really neat to see people celebrating it. We haven’t had anything but great feedback.”

  • Logan Hanner and Corinna Fu show off the solar power robot kits they built at the “Remembering hitchBOT” First Friday event at the Elfreth’s Alley Museum in Old City. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)
  • Attendees at the Elfreth’s Alley Museum’s “Remembering hitchBOT” event got to make their own robots with various activities. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)
  • Attendees at the Elfreth’s Alley Museum’s “Remembering hitchBOT” event got to make their own robots with various activities. (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)