Editing Philadelphia City Hall (section)

=== 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.