Editing Philadelphia City Hall (section)

== History ==

=== Construction ===

Construction of Philadelphia City Hall began in '''1871''' and was completed in '''1901''', a thirty-year construction period that made it one of the longest public building projects in American history. The project cost nearly $25 million—an enormous sum equivalent to over $900 million today.<ref name="encyclopedia">{{cite web |url=https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/city-hall-philadelphia/ |title=City Hall (Philadelphia) |publisher=Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia |access-date=December 22, 2025}}</ref>

Scottish-American architect John McArthur Jr. designed the building in the Second Empire architectural style, characterized by its distinctive mansard roofs with dormer windows. This style was fashionable during the reign of Napoleon III in France and became popular in America during the 1860s through 1880s. McArthur won the design competition in 1869 but died in 1890, eleven years before the building's completion. His assistant, Thomas U. Walter (who had previously designed the dome and wings of the U.S. Capitol), assisted with the project's early phases.

The prolonged construction timeline reflected both the building's enormous scale and Philadelphia's political culture of the era. As the project progressed, the building became a symbol of municipal ambition—and political excess. Nevertheless, the result was an architectural achievement that dominated the Philadelphia skyline for nearly a century.

=== The Gentlemen's Agreement ===

For decades, an unwritten "gentlemen's agreement" among Philadelphia developers ensured that no building would rise higher than the brim of William Penn's hat atop City Hall. This informal tradition kept City Hall as the tallest structure in Philadelphia from 1901 until 1987, when the skyscraper [[One Liberty Place]] controversially broke the agreement, rising to 945 feet.<ref name="yimby">{{cite web |url=https://phillyyimby.com/2021/08/looking-back-at-the-original-placement-of-the-statue-of-william-penn.html |title=Looking Back at the Originally Intended Placement of the Statue of William Penn atop City Hall |publisher=Philadelphia YIMBY |access-date=December 22, 2025}}</ref>

The violation of the gentlemen's agreement sparked the legend of the "Curse of Billy Penn," which supposedly doomed Philadelphia's professional sports teams to championship droughts. The curse was considered broken in 2008 when the [[Philadelphia Phillies]] won the World Series—after a small replica of the William Penn statue was affixed to the top of the newly constructed Comcast Center, restoring Penn to his place as the highest point in Philadelphia.