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City hall of Philadelphia

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. 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. It also houses the Philadelphia facilities for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (which also holds session and accepts filings in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh). 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.

The building was designed by Scottish born architect John McArthur Jr. and Thomas Ustick Walter 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, 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. 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 feet (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. The final construction cost was $24 million. At 548 feet (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,

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. With almost 700 rooms, City Hall is the largest municipal building in the United States and one of the largest in the world. 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 feet (8 m) in diameter. The clock faces are larger in diameter than those on Big Ben which measure 23 feet (7 m). City Hall's clock was designed by Warren Johnson and built in 1898. 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. There are four bronze eagles, each weighing three tons with 12 feet (4 m) wingspans, perched above the tower's four clocks. 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, but abandoned the plan due to the high cost of the demolition. 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. 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. The building was voted 21st on the American Institute of Architects' list of Americans' 150 favorite U. S. structures in 2007.

City Hall is situated on land that was reserved as a public square upon the city's founding in 1682. Originally known as Centre Square—later renamed Penn Square—it was used for public gatherings until the construction of City Hall began in 1871. Centre Square was one of the five original squares of Philadelphia laid out on the city grid by William Penn. The square had been located at the geographic center of Penn's city plan, but the Act of Consolidation in 1854 created the much larger and coterminous city and county of Philadelphia. Though no longer at the exact center of the city, the square remains situated in the center of the historic area between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers; an area which is now called Center City. Penn had intended that Centre Square be the central focus point where the major public buildings would be located, including those for government, religion, and education, as well as the central marketplace. However, the Delaware riverfront would remain the de facto economic and social heart of the city for more than a century.

City Hall has been a filming location for several motion pictures including Rocky (1976), Blow Out (1981), Trading Places (1983), Philadelphia (1993), 12 Monkeys (1995), National Treasure (2004), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), and Limitless (2011).