City Hall - Philadelphia, PA
Posted by: Groundspeak Regular Member Math Teacher
N 39° 57.165 W 075° 09.800
18S E 486048 N 4422525
For a few years at the beginning of the 20th century, this amazing, spectacular, stupendous building was the tallest thing on earth! Today, its artwork is a marvel and its engineering is still pioneering and a landmark. This is also an NRHP site.
Waymark Code: WMCXJA
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 10/23/2011
Published By:Groundspeak Premium Member The Blue Quasar
Views: 18

This is one site you definitely do not want to miss! It is chick full of history, art, architecture, sites, scenes, vistas and anything else what smacks of culture. Generally, the more diverse and numerous a site is with waymarks, the more interesting and important the site tends to be. This site is full of an eclectic menagerie of waymarks. To sum it up, this is the largest municipal building in the country and the finest example of the Second Empire style.

From a previous waymark I created about City Hall:

CITY HALL, Broad and MarketSts., tallest building in Philadelphia and one of the largest municipal buildings in the world, occupies four-and-a-half-acre Penn Square, known as Center square until the Center House' of the city's first waterworks on the site was removed in 1829.

The massive seven-story structure, designed by John J. McArthur, Jr. in the late French Renaissance style, encloses a landscaped courtyard at the intersection of the city's main north-south and east-west thoroughfares. It has four similar facades of white granite and marble, embellished with columns, pedimented windows and a variety of sculpture. Atop the tower (open 9-3:30 Mon.-Fri.; 9-12 Sat.), rising more than 500 feet above the street, is a 26-ton statue of William Penn modeled by Alexander Milne Calder and hoisted into place in 1894, 24 years after the construction of the building had started. A gigantic four-faced tower clock, its illuminated dials, visible for miles, was installed in 1899.

--- Pennsylvania: A Guide to the Keystone State, 1940; page 268

There are only five buildings in Philadelphia that are higher than Billy Penn's hat. The statue of William Penn (which is 37 feet (11 m) tall) which sits high atop the clock tower is probably the most well-known and recognized statue in Philadelphia. At one time law decree that no building be built higher than the Statue's Hat. There was a big stink when this law was challenged. Ultimately progress won and Billy looks up not to others.

Beneath William are other statues as well, attached to a cornice or some other thing holding them up. There are also statues scattered about the various courtyards at the bottom of the building. The clock can also be seen forever it seems, at least in Center City Philadelphia. There is also a tribute to Alexander Milne Calder, who constructed the William Penn statue.

From my pals at Wikipedia: The building was designed by Scottish-born architect John McArthur, Jr., in the Second Empire style, and was constructed from 1871 until 1901 at a cost of $24 million. Originally designed to be the world's tallest building, by the time it was completed it had already been surpassed by the Washington Monument and the Eiffel Tower, though it was indeed the world's tallest habitable building at the time of opening. It also was the first modern building (excluding the Eiffel Tower, see above) to hold the record for world's tallest and also was the first secular habitable building to hold this honor: all previous holders of the position of world's tallest were religious structures, whether European cathedrals or, for the previous 3,800 years, the Great Pyramid of Giza.


Here is how to navigate to the Philly sponsored page for this tourist attraction:

1. Go to the official Philadelphia attraction page HERE.

2. Hover over the Things to Do tab at the top and when the menu open up click on history (3rd hot link down) which will bring you HERE.

3. Click on the second, red text/hot link on the left which reads View All History. That will take you HERE.

4. Scroll down all the way to the bottom and click on page 2 which will bring you HERE.

5. Scroll down to the seventh link which will bring you to your final destination, City Hall, which finally can be found HERE.


Address
BROAD STREET AND MARKET STREET
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19107
(215) 686-2840

The "Official Tourism" URL link to the attraction: [Web Link]

The attraction’s own URL: [Web Link]

Hours of Operation:
Tours inside City Hall are given Monday through Friday at 12:30 pm and begin at the Tour Information Center. The tours last approximately 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs. Tower Tours are given from 9:30 am to 4:15 pm, however until noon (12 pm) the tours are reserved specifically for school groups. Timed tickets are available at the Tour Information Center.


Admission Prices:
Free


Approximate amount of time needed to fully experience the attraction: Half of a day (2-5 hours)

Transportation options to the attraction: Personal Vehicle or Public Transportation

Visit Instructions:

As a suggestion for your visit log, please make every effort to supply a brief-to-detailed note about your experience at the Waymark. If possible also include an image that was taken when you visited the Waymark. Images can be of yourself, a personal Waymarking signature item or just one of general interest that would be of value to others. Sharing your experience helps promote Waymarking and provides a dynamic history of your adventures.

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Recent Visits/Logs:
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