A few blocks up Market Street, emerging from the dust and clatter of construction, stood an immense pile of marble, granite and brick that would be Philadelphia's new City Hall. In 1878, it was still a work in progress. In fact, the building of City Hall paralleled a huge chunk of my great-grandfather's adult life. Construction began in 1871, when he was a lad of 13 in County Tyrone. When it was finally finished in 1909, he was 51, married, living in a trinity in Queen Village, the father of seven children.
Good things take time.
So do big things. When the city fathers hired John McArthur as architect, they had in their mind's eye no specific design, only a string of superlatives. It would be the biggest, tallest, grandest, most expensive public building of its time. That last part was unintentional. For starters, unique.