A large lump of coal once stood in the center of City Hall courtyard to mark the center of town.

Source: WPEN radio trivia, 7/1/85

A "gentlemen's agreement" kept all of Philadelphia's buildings lower than the top of Alexander Milne Calder's statue of Penn on top of City Hall. However, in 1987 the "gentlemen's agreement" was broken when Mayor Wilson Goode endorsed the building of One Liberty Place.

The Free Library of Philadelphia first began operating out of City Hall in 1894.

Source: Philadelphia Architecture: A Guide to the City, 1994, p.100, John Andrew Gallery, 720.9748 P53A

The statue is thirty-seven feet tall and weighs 53,348 pounds.

Source: Bulletin Almanac and Yearbook, 1976, p.280, 917.481 B87 1976

It started ticking on January 1, 1899.

Source: Philadelphia--City Hall--See it, Use it, Love it.

Conversation Hall, which was to have been a grand meeting place, was walled up years ago and made into cubicles for bureaucrats. It occupies the second and third stories of City Hall Tower.

Source: Phila. Inquirer, 4/29/82

The clock on Philadelphia's City Hall is twenty-six feet in diameter. The minute hand weighs 225 pounds.

Source: Philadelphia's City Hall, 2003, p. 18, Allen M. Hornblum, 974.811 H783P

Until 1987, a "gentlemen's agreement" prevented any Center City Philadelphia building from rising above the statue of William Penn. In that year, Mayor W. Wilson Goode endorsed the development of One Liberty Place, which broke the barrier.

Comcast Technology Center, 1122 feet; Comcast Center, 974 feet; One Liberty Place, 945 feet; Two Liberty Place, 846 feet; Mellon Bank Center, 791 feet; Three Logan, 738 feet; FMC Tower at Cira Centre South, 732 feet.

Penn faces northeast. The statue faces Penn Treaty Park where Penn signed a peace treaty with the local Leni Lenape Indians.

Source: Philadelphia's City Hall, 2003, p. 63, Allen M. Hornblum, 974.811 H783P

They are stairways without any visible means of support. There are 4 such 6-story tall stairways in the corners of City Hall in Philadelphia. The steps are cantilevered from the wall, with weight resting on the step below.

Center City is a term common in Europe, but unusual in the United States. William Penn spaced his four squares equidistant from Center Square, which was where City Hall now stands.

Source: Phila. Inquirer, 01/16/75

Calder worked for 21 years designing the tower, statues and ornamentation. There are representations of Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Nicholas Biddle, Thomas Mifflin, Swedes, Native Americans and the Seasons on and in the building.

Source: Klein. Fairmount Park. 1974, p.99.

The top of William Penn's hat on top of City Hall is 548 feet above street level. The William Penn statue is thirty-seven feet tall.

City Hall was designed by John McArthur Jr., at Scottish architect. It was designed in the Second Empire Style, modeled after the Palais des Tuileries and the Louvre in Paris. The building took 30 years to build and was completed in 1901.

Alexander Milne Calder designed both the statue and the tower. Calder spent 21 years working on this and other statues for the building.

Source: Philadelphia Bulletin Almanac,1976. p. 280

The nearly four story twenty-seven ton statue was cast by the Tacony Iron and Metal Works in 1889. It was completed in three years. It was raised in fourteen pieces to the top of the tower on November 28, 1894.

Source: Philadelphia's City Hall, 2003, p. 63, Allen M. Hornblum, 974.811 H783P