Philadelphia City Hall 5353
by Jack Schultz
Title
Philadelphia City Hall 5353
Artist
Jack Schultz
Medium
Photograph
Description
Philadelphia City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of the City of Philadelphia in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Built in the ornate Second Empire style, City Hall houses the chambers of the Philadelphia City Council and the offices of the Mayor of Philadelphia.[6][7]
This building is also a courthouse, serving as the seat of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. It houses the Civil Trial and Orphans' Court Divisions of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County.[8][9][10] It also houses the Philadelphia facilities for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (which also holds session and accepts filings in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh).[11]
Built using brick, white marble and limestone, Philadelphia City Hall is the world's largest free-standing masonry building and was the world's tallest habitable building upon its completion in 1894. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1976; in 2006, it was also named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.[12]
History and description
Philadelphia City Hall under construction in 1881
The building was designed by Scottish-born architect John McArthur Jr. and Thomas Ustick Walter[13] in the Second Empire style, and was constructed from 1871 to 1901 at a cost of $24 million. City Hall's tower was completed by 1894,[1] although the interior was not finished until 1901. Designed to be the world's tallest building, it was surpassed during construction by the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower and the Mole Antonelliana. The Mole Antonelliana was a few feet taller and was the tallest masonry (i.e. without the use of steel) building in the world until 1953. In that year a storm caused the spire to collapse and Philadelphia City Hall became the tallest masonry building in the world (excluding monuments). Upon completion of its tower in 1894, it became the world's tallest habitable building.[2][3] It was also the first secular building to have this distinction, as all previous world's tallest buildings were religious structures, including European cathedrals and—for the previous 3,800 years—the Great Pyramid of Giza; even the Mole Antonelliana was supposed to be a religious building - a synagogue - but then received a different use.
The location chosen was one of the five center city urban park squares dedicated by William Penn, that geometrically is the center to the other four squares within Center City renamed as Penn Square. City Hall is a masonry building whose weight is borne by granite and brick walls up to 22 ft (6.7 m) thick. The principal exterior materials are limestone, granite, and marble. The original design called for virtually no sculpture. The stonemason William Struthers and sculptor Alexander Milne Calder were responsible for the more than 250 sculptures, capturing artists, educators, and engineers who embodied American ideals and contributed to this country's genius.[14] The final construction cost was $24 million.[citation needed]
At 548 ft (167 m), including the statue of city founder William Penn atop its tower, City Hall was the tallest habitable building in the world from 1894 to 1908. It remained the tallest in Pennsylvania until it was surpassed in 1932 by the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh; it is now the 16th tallest. It was the tallest in Philadelphia until 1986 when the construction of One Liberty Place surpassed it,[15] ending the informal gentlemen's agreement that had limited the height of buildings in the city to no higher than the Penn statue.[16]
It was constructed over the time span from 1871 to 1901 and includes 700 rooms dedicated for uses of various governmental operations. The building structure used over 88 million bricks and thousands of tons of marble and granite.[17] With almost 700 rooms, City Hall is the largest municipal building in the United States and one of the largest in the world.[18] The building houses three branches of government: the city's executive branch (the Mayor's Office), its legislature (the Philadelphia City Council), and a substantial portion of the judicial activity in the city (the Civil Division and Orphan's Court of the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas for the First Judicial District are housed there, as well as chambers for some criminal judges and some judges of the Philadelphia Municipal Court).
It was the tallest clock tower in the world when it was completed; it was surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower in 1912, and is currently the 5th tallest building of this type. The tower features a clock face on each side that is 26 ft (7.9 m) in diameter.[19][20] The clock faces are larger in diameter than those on Big Ben which measure 23 ft (7 m).[21] City Hall's clock was designed by Warren Johnson and built in 1898.[22] The 1937 Philadelphia Guide noted that "shortly after the clock was installed the city inaugurated a custom which still continues. Every evening at three minutes of nine the tower lights are turned off, and then turned on again on the hour. This enables those within observation distance, though unable to see the hands, to set their timepieces.[23] There are four bronze eagles, each weighing three tons with 12 ft (3.7 m) wingspans, perched above the tower's four clocks.[17]
City Hall's observation deck is located directly below the base of the statue, about 500 ft (150 m) above street level.[24] Once enclosed with chain-link fencing, the observation deck is now enclosed by glass. It is reached in a 6-person elevator whose glass panels allow visitors to see the interior of the iron superstructure that caps the tower and supports the statuary and clocks. Stairs within the tower are only used for emergency exit. The ornamentation of the tower has been simplified; the huge garlands that festooned the top panels of the tower were removed.
In the 1950s, the city council investigated tearing down City Hall for a new building elsewhere. They found that the demolition would have bankrupted the city due to the building's masonry construction.[citation needed]
Beginning in 1992, Philadelphia City Hall underwent a comprehensive exterior restoration, planned and supervised by the Historical Preservation Studio of Vitetta Architects & Engineers, headed by renowned historical preservation architect Hyman Myers.[25] The majority of the restoration was completed by 2007, although some work has continued, including the installation of four new ornamental courtyard gates, based on an original architectural sketch, in December 2015.[26][27][28]
The building was voted 21st on the American Institute of Architects' list of Americans' 150 favorite U.S. structures in 2007.
Uploaded
February 17th, 2024
Embed
Share
Comments
There are no comments for Philadelphia City Hall 5353. Click here to post the first comment.