Philadelphia's City Hall


Book Description

At the crossroads of Center City, Philadelphia, stands city hall, an architectural and sculptural masterpiece whose size and beauty rival the grand structures found in the capitals of Europe. Shortly after the Civil War, city hall embraced the community's need for a new municipal building while filling the visionary desire of its designers to underscore Philadelphia's reputation as "the Athens of America." Thirty years later stood a monumental structure that was easily the largest building in North America and one of the most beautiful, displaying over two hundred fifty pieces of sculpture. Philadelphia's City Hall illuminates the fascinating account of the building's controversial origin, its symbolic sculptural program, and the largest statue topping a building in the world. These stunning photographs highlight a marvel of masonry and community vision created by a city with the desire to show the world what it could produce.




The New City Hall, Philadelphia


Book Description



















The New City Hall, Philadelphia


Book Description




The New City Hall, Philadelphia


Book Description




The New City Hall, Philadelphia


Book Description

Excerpt from The New City Hall, Philadelphia: Directory of Offices Occupied, or Allotted and in Process of Completion, With Diagrams and Other Miscellaneous Information Appertaining to the Building, October 7, 1890 The buildings from the exterior on each of the four fronts, exclusive of the centre and corner pavilions, present a base ment story or ground floor, with three principal stories, the uppermost one being a mansard story. These stories, above the basement, are in portions divided by mezzanine or half stories, which are specially to be noticed from the court-yard. The centre and corner pavilions rise above the adjacent wings and curtains, with attic stories; the corner pavilions being occupied by octagonal staircases. Including the sub-basement and the mezzanine stories, there are seven floors in the building, the rooms in each floor being on the same level. To each of these floors an even one hundred numbers have been assigned, commencing at the north entrance and following round the buildings to the east, south, and west fronts, and returning to the north entrance; twenty-five numbers being assigned for each quarter of the building. The rooms facing the streets will have the even numbers, and those overlooking the court yard the Odd numbers. I' he numbers in each one hundred will be assigned to the rooms Of corresponding numbers im mediately above and below upon the other floors. Thus, for example, rooms numbered 40, 140, 240, 340, 440, 540 and 640 will be immediately one over the other.er directory oi: offices te alphabetically arranged. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.