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| >HOME >PLACES TO GO >SQUARES | ||||
Center Square In the city grid devised by William Penn and Penn's surveyor, Thomas Holme, Center Square was the largest of the original squares; at ten acres, it was intended as a future site for public buildings. But early residents, ignoring Penn's well-laid plans, clustered near the Delaware River, and for almost two centuries Center Square was far from central. In the 18th century, it remained mostly an undeveloped lot, cut into four sections by Broad and High (now Market) Streets. In the late 1790s, after frightening yellow fever epidemics, the city purified the water supply by building the first public water works, with its principal facility at Center Square. Opened in 1801, the Center Square pump house was a handsome neoclassical building designed by Benjamin Latrobe and adorned with William Rush's fountain sculpture Water Nymph and Bittern. The site couldn't accommodate a growing city so within two decades, the Center Square system gave way to new water works at Fairmount. Latrobe's pump house was demolished in 1829. As the population expanded westward, Center Square, now renamed Penn Square after the city's founder, regained the central position it had occupied in the original plan. As early as 1860, city leaders proposed offices for the site, and in 1870 the voters were asked to choose between Washington Square and Penn Square for the location of "New Public Buildings." Penn Square won handily, and construction began on the mammoth edifice that we know as City Hall. Designed by John McArthur, Jr. in the ornate French Second Empire style used for the Louvre in Paris, City Hall took thirty years to build. It occupies four and half acres, and is over 547 feet tall, making it the tallest masonry-bearing building in the world. Alexander Milne Calder and his assistants created more than 250 architectural sculptures for the building's exterior and interior. Most of the sculptures are allegorical themes relating to the city's history, government, culture and commerce. Calder's most famous sculpture is the figure of William Penn atop of City Hall. Over 36 feet high and over 53,000 pounds, Calder's Penn clearly deserves his reputation as the largest man in Philadelphia. The statue faces northeast toward Penn Treaty Park, the site of the legendary treaty between and the Lenni Lenape Indians. Up until 1986, as the result of the "gentlemen's agreement" among planners and developers, no building in Center City was taller than Penn's hat. On the tower below the Penn statue are four large bronzes representing Native Americans and early Swedish settlers - people who inhabited the area long before Philadelphia was a glimmer in Penn's eye. Between these human figures, Calder placed four eagles, wings outspread, as emblems of the American nation that absorbed Quakers, Swedes, Native Americans, and many more. Other Points of Interest: The wide sidewalks around City Hall feature several statues. On the northern side two Civil War generals, John F. Reynolds and George B. McClellan, sit astride their bronze horses. Near the generals stand the figure of Matthias W. Baldwin, founder of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and John Christian Bullitt, a nineteenth-century lawyer, financial man, and political reformer. For the east plaza of City Hall the well-known sculptor John Massey Rhind created a bronze of John Wanamaker, the eminent department-store owner and civic leader. The statue faces east towards the store that Wanamaker founded. On the south side is a bronze of President William McKinley who was assassinated in 1901. Though he was not a Philadelphian, local citizens raised funds to memorialize him after his death. Below the portrait sculpture of the president are two allegorical figures that represent Wisdom instructing Youth. The plaza west of City Hall was renamed in 1977 for the former reformist mayor Richardson Dilworth. Here, on the lower level, the aluminum sculpture Phoenix Rising by local artist Emlen Etting symbolizes Dilworth's long-cherished ideal of a renewed and vital city. |
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