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Stephanie | all galleries >> USA >> Pennsylvania >> Philadelphia >> Ben Franklin Bridge > Center City Philly
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22-MAR-2014

Center City Philly

If you look carefully, you can see the statue of William Penn immersed amongst the skyscrapers!

Atop Philadelphia City Hall stands a statue of William Penn, the city founder and original proprietor of the then-British colony of Pennsylvania (meaning "Penn's Woods").
For years, a "gentlemen's agreement" stated that the Philadelphia Art Commission would approve no building in the city which would rise above this statue.
This ended in March 1987, when a modern steel-and-glass skyscraper, One Liberty Place, opened three blocks away.
One Liberty Place is taller than City Hall by 397 feet (121 m), rising 945 feet (288 m) in height compared to the height of Penn's hat on City Hall, 547 feet (167 m).
Its sister skyscraper, Two Liberty Place, at 848 ft (258 m), followed in 1990.

The CURSE OF BILLY PENN was a curse used to explain the failure of major professional sports teams based in Philadelphia to win championships since the March 1987 construction of the One Liberty Place skyscraper, which exceeded the height of William Penn's statue atop Philadelphia City Hall.
The curse apparently ended on October 29, 2008, when the Philadelphia Phillies won the 2008 World Series, a year and four months after a statuette of the William Penn figure atop City Hall was affixed to the final beam during the Jun 2007 topping-off of the Comcast Center, currently the tallest building in the city.

Canon EOS 7D
0.60s f/14.0 at 117.0mm iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
Graeme07-Apr-2014 09:09
Outstanding work, Stephanie.BV
Zoltán Balogh06-Apr-2014 13:31
Magnificent! V
MarcViskens05-Apr-2014 19:10
very nice composition Stephanie
janescottcumming05-Apr-2014 13:05
Very nice cityscape and great text! V
Patrick F03-Apr-2014 11:11
Great shot and interesting info!!!!!! V++++++
Tom LeRoy02-Apr-2014 05:40
A great image to this interesting story! V
Michel Duval01-Apr-2014 09:21
What a nice mood. V
Yvonne01-Apr-2014 07:26
What a wonderful story... I had no idea how Pennsylvania got its name before today! v
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