To celebrate Valentine's Day, Rosenbach Museum puts historical love letters on display

The Rosenbach Museum on Delaney Street is hosted a special showing of their "love letters" collection Thursday evening in honor of Valentine's Day.
Photo credit Hadas Kuznits/KYW Newsradio
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Rosenbach Museum on Delaney Street hosted a special showing of their love letters collection Thursday evening in honor of Valentine's Day.

The Rosenbach Museum houses a variety of manuscripts, including historical love letters. 

"So we have letters by a guy named Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and we have love letters from John Keates, the famous romantic poet," said Emilie Parker, the museum's director of education. 

Parker says they have letters between a 1920s Hollywood socialite named Mercedes de Acosta and actress Marlene Dietrich.  

"Also, Mercedes dated Greta Garbo as well, so those relationships were certainly not public in the 1920s," Parker said. 

Historic love letters on display @RosenbachMuseum more @KYWNewsradio pic.twitter.com/xoayTxETQg

— Hadas Kuznits (@hadaskuznits) February 14, 2019

Parker says you can see their strong personalities through these letters.  

"They talk about how they love each other, they talk about how they hate each other," Parker explained.    

Parker says the love letters between Garbo and de Acosta were considered to be so scandalous, they had an agreement to keep them sealed for 20 years after Garbo's death.

"Definitely, I mean, even Greta Garbo wearing pants was a huge deal at the time. I mean, that was splashed all over the media, the fact that she was wearing these wide-leg wool pants," Parker said.