"Somewhere there's a huge Phillies hat in storage, but who knows if it will ever be worn again." Greta Greenberger
City Hall has the only publicly accessible observation deck in Philadelphia, 500 feet up.
The hat is just one of many fascinating stories floating around Philadelphia's City Hall.
Greenberger knows them by heart. She's been City's Hall's tour director for 21 years. Her corps of volunteers leads weekday tours year round. If you're ever in town with a few hours to spare, call 215-264-0413 for a timed ticket and a good time.
Penn's Vision
It all began, of course, with William Penn. When he designed Philadelphia in 1682, he envisioned five squares with public buildings clustered around a center square. It took 200 years, but in 1871, construction began on an ornate city hall on Center Square. With a tower and a 37-foot bronze statue of William Penn on top, Philadelphia's City Hall was to be the world's tallest building.
But during the 30 years it took to build it, both the Washington Monument and the Eiffel Tower surpassed it in height.
It is still the world's tallest masonry building, made of granite and brick with marble facing. No steel. And it remained Philadelphia's tallest building for 85 years after its completion under a gentlemen's agreement to keep it so.
It has 700 rooms, 14.5 acres of floor space, 26-foot diameter clocks on its tower, and 250 sculptures by Alexander Milne Calder including Penn who, at 27 tons, weighs in as the tallest statue atop any building in the world.
Lure of the Tower
It's the tower that lured me. It has the only publicly accessible observation deck in the city. And, by far, the best view.
I picked up my ticket in the Room 121 on the ground floor of City Hall, went through security and took an elevator to the 7th floor.
I got off and followed red lines on the floor to an escalator that took me up another floor to a room where I waited my turn.
The old elevator to the top carries only four people at a time, but you can entertain yourself with a model of City Hall and photos that show how they clean William Penn every ten years.
The glass elevator climbed slowly up through the tower with its old wood framing and innards of the huge clocks.
The 500-foot observation deck has glass walls and feels safe. The 360-degree view at the top is stunning. Over there is New Jersey...and the rivers. The convention center looks enormous, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the Art Museum looks like the Champs-Elysees. It's like looking down on a map.
Looking up, William Penn towers over you.
Vision of Penn
"The mouth of the placid-looking face would easily take in a whole turkey in one bite. His nose is one foot and three inches long. And his eyes, measuring 10 inches across, are more than a foot apart," Greenberger writes.
She has gone to great lengths to track down those details.
She has climbed to the top of William Penn nine times to do research.
"They put a ladder up one of his legs to a platform at about crotch level, then another long ladder goes to his hat where there's glass hatch," she said.
Did putting a Phillies cap on Penn in 1993 bring on the curse?
That was how workmen, in the 1990s, put a Phillies hat on Penn's head when the city's baseball team was in World Series contention; they lost. And it's how they put an orange shirt on Penn's shoulders when the Flyers competed for the Stanley Cup in 1997; they lost.
The Curse of Billy Penn
In 1987, Philadelphia built a building taller than City Hall and William Penn.
The city's sports teams, who had been at the top of their games in the 1970s and 1980s, slipped into a pattern of failure.
The Phillies lost the 1993 World Series. The Eagles lost the 2005 Super Bowl. Even Smarty Jones saw his bid for the Triple Crown disappear when he finished fourth in the 2004 Belmont Stakes.
Had the curse of Billy Penn fallen on the city? Was Penn miffed that he was no longer tops in Philadelphia? Did he resent being dressed up for sporting events? No one knew for sure.
But in 2007, when the city's newest and tallest building, Comcast Center, was topped off, a small statue of William Penn was welded to the top beam.
The next year the Phillies won the World Series, ending the curse. Perhaps. But no one has dared to dress up William Penn on the City Hall tower again...just in case.
"Somewhere there's a huge Phillies hat in storage," said Greta Greenberger. "But who knows if it will ever be worn again."
If You Go:
City Hall Tower Tours
Visitor Center, Room 121, City Hall
Broad Street & Market Street/Juniper Street entrance
215-686-2840 (reservations)
How Far by Car? 2 hours
Tower Tours:
When: Every 15 minutes, Monday-Friday, from 9:30 a.m.-4:15 p.m. Reservations required: call 215-686-2840 for timed tickets available same day only.
Cost: Adults $6, Youth (3-18), seniors (over 65) and military, $4
Interior Tour:
A longer two-hour tour of City Hall (including Mayor's Office, Council Chambers and the tower) is available Monday-Friday at 12:30 p.m. Reservations required: call 215-686-2840 for tickets available same day only.
Cost: Adults $12, Youth (3-18), seniors (over 65) and military, $8
Tip: The tour office begins taking calls for that day's reservations at 9 a.m.
A Side Trip: City Hall features Philadelphia artists in a small gallery in Room 116
Be aware: The tower is not handicap accessible.