Philadelphia: City Hall Building Tour
Did you know that the tallest building in the world is in Philadelphia? No kidding … I am not referring to tallest as in the Burj Dubai, or Taipei 101 or the Petronas Twin Towers.
That tallest building in the world is the City Hall in Philadelphia. The City Hall is at the center of the city … so center that there is a sort of a roundabout (more like a “squareabout”) around the City Hall. If you can imagine it … they put the City Hall right in the middle of the intersection of two roads that bisects the city into quadrants.
The reason why this is called the tallest is this is the tallest masonry building in the world. There are no steel frames that support the building. The entire weight of the building is borne by the sheer thickness of the stone walls. Any higher than this, any building would have collapsed by its own weight.
The Philadelphia City Hall was actually the tallest building, period, in the early 1900s when it was constructed.
Despite this being over 100 years old, it is still very much a working building. You would find it hard to believe but within this relatively small space, there are over 700 rooms in all, making it one of the largest municipal buildings in the world even today.
The total height from bottom to the top of the statue of William Penn is almost 550′. I bet you can bet at least the contribution of William Penn to Philadelphia, PENNsylvania. He founded Philadelphia and that statue is the highest adorned statue in the world.
Not many people know about this but you could actually book yourself a City Hall Building Tour. It is but far the best tour we had so far because we were shown to almost every nook and cranny of the City Hall. (more…)