Results tagged “williampenn”

• A suspect has been arrested in the murder last month of Philadelphia Housing Authority carpenter Rodney Barnes.
Continue reading "Extra, Extra"

Sometimes, I forget that there are certain parks in Philadelphia that I absolutely love. Take Logan Square (or Logan Circle, depending on your grasp of geometry). I hadn't been there for a long while, until this past weekend when I spent a few hours reading on the grass there. At the center of Logan Circle is the Swann Fountain, which was designed and created by Wilson Eyre, Jr. and Alexander Stirling Calder in honor of the founder of the Philadelphia Fountain Society, Dr. Wilson Cary Swann. The fountain is (in my mind) the most magnificent fountain in the city, and I think the vast number of people who visit Logan Circle just to jump in the fountain during the summer agree with me. (Side note: you're not actually allowed to swim in the fountain. "No Swimming" is pretty clearly painted around the fountain. But people do it anyway. And the faint smell of chlorine in the air when I was there last suggests to me that the city is going to look the other way on this issue.) It is also known as the Fountain of the Three Rivers as the three Native American figures in the center of the fountain were meant to represent Philly's three main waterways: the Wissahickon, the Schuylkill, and the Delaware. The fountain's design is a bit fun: there are turtles and frogs scattered around its perimeter, and the three figures in the center are each holding swans (haha, get it?). The geyser in the center of the fountain can shoot water up to fifty feet in the air.

Living in a city full of history, it is easy to miss things that are full of historical value and interest. We're lucky enough to have a wealth of fascinating locations at our fingertips and so don't always notice that they are there. Take this week's park for example. Located off 2nd street between Walnut and Chestnut Street in Old City, Welcome Park tends not to stand out. I always just thought of it simply as the space in front of the Ritz East movie theater and not as an actual park, let alone an actual park with a neat story.

Open House at Fairmount Park Environmental Centers Learn about local wildlife, bird watch, and look at native fish in aquariums. Saturday 4/4, Wissahickon Environmental Center, 10AM-4PM and Pennypack Environmental Center, 9AM-3PM

Dear Philadelphia:

Fun around town, for $10 or less:

'kay thanks, bye!

Films: Tazza: The High Rollers, Red Road, The Curse of William Penn

Time to gear up, people: the 16th Philadelphia Film Festival starts tomorrow! As we did last year, Phillyist is planning plenty of coverage, mostly taking the form of film festival diary entries from various staff members (including, of course, yours truly, whose schedule can be seen here, in case you're interested). But what's going on this year, and what should you look forward to? Well, we're glad you asked. Let's pick through the overview press release, shall we?

Dear William Penn:

Miro Dance Theatre founders
Tobin Rothlein and Amanda Miller

With the Comcast Center pushing upward, 2006 will be the last year that One Liberty Place can claim to be Pennsylvania's tallest building, a title it's held since its controversial ascent was completed in 1987.

Standing at 61 stories and 945 feet, One Liberty Place was the tenth-tallest building in the United States when completed (it's currently 18th). It is a visually striking structure, an angular postmodern homage to New York's Chrysler Builidng, the 1930 masterpiece that is said by some to be the greatest skyscraper ever built. Credit for One Liberty Place's appearance goes to German architect Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Architects, whose work can be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

There was much debate in Philadelphia about whether One Liberty Place should be built at all. Although never an official law, a gentlemen's agreement not to build taller than the William Penn statue atop City Hall (548 feet) had limited the city's skyscrapers to a modest 500 ft.

A flashy building nearly 400 feet taller than the statue, Liberty One looked extremely awkward as the first and only building above City Hall. But once the gentlemen's agreement was broken, more cranes quickly littered Philly's sky. Between 1987 and 1992, six other skyscrapers defied the height limitation, strengthening the "Curse of Billy Penn," a purported hex on Philly sports teams set in place by the breaking of the agreement. (Hoping that the last 19 years without a major sports title are merely coincidence, we're moving on from this subject.)

Philly's skyscraper development trends were not unique in the United States. Fifteen of the nation's 25 tallest towers were completed during an American building boom that occurred between 1982 and 1992. From 1993 throuth 2005, no top 25 skyscrapers have risen in the US, and no new structure in Philly has eclipsed William Penn.

These days, Philadelphia's growth is again following wider trends. As the city's new tallest is under construction, so is New York's Freedom Tower, which will rise 1776 feet to become the tallest building in the United States.

So, in these last few months before One Liberty Place loses its status as our tallest building, we offer this photographic tribute. We have an enormous and amazing piece of postmodern architectural artwork nearly 1000 feet above our city's streets, and we appreciate it.


More photos in the continuation of this article.

William Penn is perhaps best known by Philadelphians as "that guy whose statue looks like it's peeing." People with more couth (than, say, Phillyist) might point out that what people mistake for Penn's penis is actually an unfortunately aligned glove. Those people are boring.

William Penn keeps his back turned to Lincoln Financial Field after being called "Ben Franklin" by this week's announcers.

Work has been going on at the site, located along 17th Street between JFK and Arch, for almost two years now. The concrete core is about the same height as the William Penn statue at the top of City Hall, making the building's impact on the skyline impossible to miss.

We see dead people. You might too, considering you can't swing a dead cat in Philadelphia without hitting someone with a ghost story. Professional ghost hunters like the Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance probably never have a shortage of haunted sites to investigate. But you don't have to be a professional or go on a tour to find the spirits -- you simply need to know where to look.