Benjamin Franklin attended a revival meeting in Philadelphia and was greatly impressed with Whitefield's ability to deliver a message to such a large group. Franklin had previously dismissed as exaggeration reports of Whitefield preaching to crowds of the order of tens of thousands in England. When listening to Whitefield preaching from the Philadelphia court house, Franklin walked away towards his shop in Market Street until he could no longer hear Whitefield distinctly—Whitefield could be heard over 500 feet. He then estimated his distance from Whitefield and calculated the area of a semicircle centred on Whitefield. Allowing two square feet per person he computed that Whitefield could be heard by over 30,000 people in the open air.[42][43] After one of Whitefield's sermons, Franklin noted the:
The Reverend George Whitefield statue that formerly stood on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United Stateswonderful ... change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seem'd as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.
— Franklin 1888, p. 135
Franklin was an ecumenist and approved of Whitefield's appeal to members of many denominations but unlike Whitefield was not an evangelical. He admired Whitefield as a fellow intellectual, and published several of his tracts, but thought Whitefield's plan to run an orphanage in Georgia would lose money. A lifelong close friendship developed between the revivalist preacher and the worldly Franklin.[44] True loyalty based on genuine affection, coupled with a high value placed on friendship, helped their association grow stronger over time.[45] Letters exchanged between Franklin and Whitefield can be found at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.[46] These letters document the creation of an orphanage for boys named the Charity School. In 1749, Franklin chose the Whitefield meeting house, with its Charity School, to be purchased as the site of the newly-formed Academy of Philadelphia which opened in 1751, followed in 1755 with the College of Philadelphia, both the predecessors of the University of Pennsylvania. A statue of George Whitefield was located in the Dormitory Quadrangle, standing in front of the Morris and Bodine sections of the present Ware College House on the University of Pennsylvania campus.[47] On 2 July 2020, the University of Pennsylvania announced they would be removing the statue because of Whitefield's connection to slavery.[48]
