Philadelphia City Hall Rises Above

Who doesn’t love City Hall? The only slight drawbacks are lame Dilworth Plaza, but that’s not even the building itself, and John Street is housed in it. Anyway, the New York Times recently had an article about the tower, which described how it is the quintessential Philadelphia story. It was delayed for years, was thought to have derived from corruption and graft, and people even called for its destruction…they only backed off when no one could figure out how to get rid of all the materials left over.

And now it is one of the best municipial buildings in the nation, if not the world. Massive in size, intricate in detail, it sports over 250 different sculptures, which display messages of government, law, war, history and whatever one wants to decipher. And now the exterior is being brightened day by day, as pigeon feces and other grime is being lifted from its white, somewhat milky, facade. It’s one of the gems of Philadelphia, something that sets the city apart from most every other city in ‘the new world’, and even most other cities around the world: we have an architectural masterpiece which is used every single day. It is a working piece of art, and the heart of the city. Treasure it. Treat it right. And, most of all, go there. Visit it. Don’t be that guy that never visits his own city’s great buildings, because you’ll be missing out.