Keys to Community Ben Franklin 9-ft bronze bust

Philadelphia once had a Benjamin Franklin made of pennies, and part of it is still in Old City. Penny Franklin was a bust by Reginald E. Beauchamp, unveiled in 1971 and covered with nearly 80,000 pennies collected by schoolchildren for the 100th anniversary of the Fire Department's Engine 8. The Inquirer reported in 2019 that it stood about 14 feet tall, perhaps 16 depending on the source, and was moved to a warehouse in 1996 after years of wear and the removal of some pennies. According to the Association for Public Art, it was described as acrylic; the Inquirer calls it fibreglass.

In 2003 the city commissioned local sculptor James Peniston to replace it. His answer, Keys to Community, is a nine-foot bronze bust of Franklin turning to greet a visitor. According to the Association for Public Art, Peniston visited about two dozen elementary schools and asked each child to bring a key to be worked into the surface; over two years he collected more than 1,000. Firefighters ran a penny drive in 500 local schools. The Association for Public Art and the Constitutional walking tour give the total as more than 1.8 million pennies. The bronze also holds brass nameplates for firefighters who died in the line of duty, and, according to the city's public art director, as reported by the Inquirer, pennies from the original sculpture.