page_title: Philadelphia City Hall
section_title: William Penn statue
hierarchical_section_title: Philadelphia City Hall / William Penn statue
context_page_description: Philadelphia City Hall is the city hall of the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It serves as the seat of the municipal government of the City of Philadelphia, housing the chambers of the Philadelphia City Council and the offices of the Mayor of Philadelphia. It is also a courthouse, serving as the seat of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, and houses the Civil Trial and Orphans' Court Divisions of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County.
  Built of brick, white marble, and limestone, Philadelphia City Hall is the world’s largest free standing masonry building. In 1976, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, and in 2006, also named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
context_section_description: The building is topped by a 37 ft (11 m) bronze statue weighing 53,348 lb (24,198 kg) of city founder William Penn, one of 250 sculptures created by Alexander Milne Calder that adorn the building inside and out. The statue was cast at the Tacony Iron Works of Northeast Philadelphia and hoisted to the top of the tower in fourteen sections in 1894. The statue is the tallest atop any building in the world. Despite its lofty perch, the city has mandated that the statue be cleaned about every ten years to remove corrosion and reduce deterioration due to weathering, with the latest cleaning done in May 2017. Penn's statue is hollow, and a narrow access tunnel through it leads to a 22-inch-diameter (56 cm) hatch atop the hat.
  Calder wished the statue to face south so that its face would be lit by the sun most of the day, the better to reveal the details of his work. The statue actually faces northeast, towards Penn Treaty Park in the Fishtown section of the city, which commemorates the site where Penn signed a treaty with the local Native American tribe. Pennsbury Manor, Penn's country home in Bucks County, is also located to the northeast.
  By the terms of a gentlemen's agreement that forbade any structure from rising above the hat on the Penn statue, Philadelphia City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until it was surpassed by One Liberty Place in 1986. The abrogation of this agreement supposedly brought a curse onto local professional sports teams. Twice during the 1990s, the statue was partially clothed in a major league sports team's uniform when they were in contention for a championship: a Phillies cap in 1993 and a Flyers jersey in 1997—both teams lost. The supposed curse ended 22 years later when the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, a year and four months after a Penn statuette had been affixed to the final beam of the Comcast Center during its topping out ceremony in June 2007. Another Penn statuette was placed on the topmost beam of the Comcast Technology Center in November 2017, and the Eagles won the Super Bowl a few months later.
caption: William Penn statue on the ground
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