City Hall station (SEPTA)

Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia. It comprises the area that made up the City of Philadelphia prior to the Act of Consolidation, 1854, which extended the city borders to be coterminous with Philadelphia County. Greater Center City (defined from Girard Avenue to Tasker Street) has grown into the second-most densely populated downtown area in the United States, after Midtown Manhattan in New York City, with an estimated 202,100 residents in 2020 and a population density of 26,284 per square mile.

Philadelphia City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of the City of Philadelphia. Built in the ornate Second Empire style, City Hall houses the chambers of the Philadelphia City Council and the offices of the Mayor of Philadelphia. It is also a courthouse, serving as the seat of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, and houses the Civil Trial and Orphans' Court Divisions of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County.Built of brick, white marble, and limestone, Philadelphia City Hall is the world's largest free-standing masonry building and was the world's tallest habitable building upon its completion in 1894. In 1976, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, and in 2006, was also named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

A Quest for Parity: The Octavius V. Catto Memorial is a group of sculptures designed by Branly Cadet memorializing Octavius Catto in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was unveiled in 2017 and is the first monument on Philadelphia public property to commemorate a specific African American.

Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. It is one of the most historically significant cities in the United States and served as the nation's capital city until 1800. The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of the world's largest metropolitan regions with 6.245 million residents in 2020. Philadelphia is known for its extensive contributions to American history and for its role in the life sciences, business and industry, art, literature, and music.Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom. The city served as the capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's independence. Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress in 1774 following the Boston Tea Party, preserved the Liberty Bell, and hosted the Second Continental Congress during which the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, which historian Joseph Ellis has described as "the most potent and consequential words in American history". Once the Revolutionary War commenced, both the Battle of Germantown and the siege of Fort Mifflin were fought within Philadelphia's city limits. The U.S. Constitution was later ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, when it was surpassed by New York City, and served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions during and following the American Revolution, including from 1790 to 1800 while the new national capital of Washington, D.C., was under construction. With 18 four-year universities and colleges, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. As of 2021, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was the state's largest and nation's ninth-largest metropolitan economy with a gross metropolitan product of US$479 billion. The city is home to five Fortune 500 corporate headquarters as of 2022. The Philadelphia skyline, which includes several globally renowned commercial skyscrapers, is expanding, primarily with new residential high-rise condominiums. Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley are a biotechnology and venture capital hub; and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation, and the city's multimodal transport and logistics infrastructure, including Philadelphia International Airport, the PhilaPort seaport, freight rail infrastructure, roadway traffic capacity, and warehouse storage space, are all expanding. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.Philadelphia is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is 2,052 acres (830 ha), representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 45th-largest urban park. The city is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolution-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42 million domestic tourists who spent $6.8 billion, representing $11 billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties.With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.Philadelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans. In 2021, Time magazine named Philadelphia one of the world's greatest 100 places.

William Penn is a bronze statue by Alexander Milne Calder of William Penn, the founder and namesake for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.It is located atop the Philadelphia City Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was installed in 1894. It was cast in fourteen sections, and took almost two years to finish. For almost 90 years, an unwritten gentlemen's agreement forbade any building in the city from rising above the hat on the Penn statue. This agreement ended in 1985, when final approval was given to the Liberty Place complex. Its centerpieces are two skyscrapers, One Liberty Place and Two Liberty Place, which rose well above the height of Penn's hat. Since 2019, there have been calls to remove statues in the city which are now considered politically volatile. Due to William Penn being a slave owner, columnist Stu Bykofsky for The Philadelphia Inquirer sardonically wrote: "We can't abide 37 feet of him towering over the city. Take down the statue and snip his name off the commonwealth. We will become Sylvania."

Matthias William Baldwin is a monumental statue located outside Philadelphia City Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The statue honors industrialist and philanthropist Matthias W. Baldwin and was designed by sculptor Herbert Adams. It was dedicated in 1906 and moved to its present location in 1921. Baldwin was an industrialist who was an early developer of steam locomotives in the United States during the early 19th century. His company, the Baldwin Locomotive Works, was founded in Philadelphia and was one of the largest locomotive manufacturers in the world during the 1800s. Baldwin was also a philanthropist who donated to the Franklin Institute and supported causes intended to help African Americans, including suffrage and abolitionism. He died in 1866. Efforts to erect a statue in his honor began in the early 1900s, with Philadelphia's city government passing an ordinance allowing the Fairmount Park Art Association to erect a statue on public property near the locomotive works. The statue itself was a gift from the company to the city, and it was completed by Adams in 1905. It was officially dedicated on June 2, 1906, in a ceremony attended by Philadelphia Mayor John Weaver and other politicians and businessmen. In 1921, the statue was relocated to the north property of the city hall, and, following another move in 1936, the statue has stood near Broad and Market Street. In 2020, the statue, along with several other monuments in the city, was vandalized during the George Floyd protests in Philadelphia.

The Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia is a luxury hotel and residential complex in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It comprises three adjoining buildings: the Girard Trust Bank, at the northwest corner of South Broad & Chestnut Streets; the Girard Trust Building, at the southwest corner of South Broad Street & South Penn Square; and The Residences at the Ritz Carlton, at 1414 South Penn Square.

One South Broad, also known as the Lincoln-Liberty Building or PNB Building, is a 28-story 472-foot (144 m) office tower in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The art deco tower, designed by architect John Torrey Windrim as an annex for Wanamaker's department store, was completed in 1932. Wanamaker's Men's Store opened in the first seven floors of the building, which is located a block from Wanamaker's main store, and was intended to rival European department stores with its size and selection. In 1952, the Philadelphia National Bank (PNB) bought the building and converted it into offices and banking space. Until 2014, the building's bell tower was decorated on all four sides with PNB's initials in stainless steel 16 feet (4.9 m) tall. Wells Fargo is the main tenant, occupying almost half the building. The former banking space at street level was converted to retail and restaurant space in 2000. Containing 465,000 square feet (43,000 m2) of space, One South Broad features a three-story gallery lobby that connects to the Widener Building, adjacent to the south. The 24th and 25th floors originally featured a luxurious penthouse designed for Rodman Wanamaker and his wife; it was converted to office use in 2000 by independent advertising agency Red Tettemer O'Connell + Partners. The tower houses the 17-ton Founder's Bell, one of the largest in the world, a memorial to John Wanamaker by his son Rodman; listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places by the Philadelphia Historical Commission, the bell is rung hourly, except for Sundays.

The Residences at The Ritz-Carlton is a luxury residential skyscraper in Center City in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At 518 feet (158 m), the 48-story skyscraper is the twelfth-tallest building in Philadelphia, and the tallest residential tower in the city. The building was erected on the former site of One Meridian Plaza which was seriously damaged by a deadly fire in 1991. One Meridian Plaza was demolished in 1999 and the property was sold by E/R Partners to the Arden Group the next year. Development of the site by the Arden Group, which owns the adjacent Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia, was delayed for years as a result of a feud with rival developer Mariner Commercial Properties. Mariner owned the property 1441 Chestnut Street, which sits south of the Residences at The Ritz-Carlton site and intends to build its own residential tower. The feud began after Arden Group's lead partner Craig Spencer blocked approval of 1441 Chestnut Street because he felt the tower's design would be detrimental to the planned Residences at The Ritz-Carlton tower. This led to several years of dispute between the developers trying to block construction of each other's towers. After several redesigns, the feud was declared over, and construction on the Residences at The Ritz-Carlton began on May 2, 2006. The blue glass skyscraper opened to residents in January 2009. The Residences at The Ritz-Carlton features 270 condominiums and penthouses, which range in price from US$550,000 to US$14 million. The high-rise also features an underground parking garage, a fitness center, a pool, and a private garden and public plaza called Girard Park.

One Meridian Plaza, formerly known as the Fidelity Mutual Life Building, Three Girard Plaza and Three Mellon Bank Center, was a 38-story high-rise office building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The 492-foot (150-meter) tower was designed by Vincent Kling & Associates and completed in 1972. On February 23, 1991, a twelve-alarm fire began on the 22nd floor and raged out of control for nineteen hours. Philadelphia firefighters fought the blaze but struggled due to a lack of power in the skyscraper and insufficient water pressure from the building's standpipes. Three firefighters died in the fire after becoming disoriented by heavy smoke. Firefighting efforts inside the building were eventually abandoned, due to fears the structure would collapse. The fire was only brought under control once it reached the 30th floor, which was one of the few floors that had automatic sprinklers installed. Ten sprinklers held back the fire until it started burning itself out and was finally brought under control. The blaze seriously damaged One Meridian Plaza, destroying eight floors and damaging neighboring buildings in the Center City district. An investigation of the fire, led by the Office of the Fire Marshal of the City of Philadelphia with assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) national investigative response team, determined the blaze started after linseed oil–soaked rags ignited. For eight years after the fire, One Meridian Plaza sat vacant and damaged. The building was caught in litigation between its owners and the insurance company over how much the insurers would pay the owners and how repairs or demolition would proceed. Businesses near the empty high-rise closed or moved, and the city brought the owners to court to resolve the building's fate. After lawsuits were settled, the building was declared a total loss and was demolished in 1999. The lot was later used for the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, which was completed ten years later.

Dilworth Park is a public park and open space along the western side of City Hall in Center City, Philadelphia. The one-half-acre (0.20 ha) park opened to the public on September 4, 2014.

Broad Street is a major arterial street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The street runs for approximately 13 miles (21 km), beginning at the intersection of Cheltenham Avenue on the border of Cheltenham Township and the West/East Oak Lane neighborhoods of North Philadelphia to the Philadelphia Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. It is Pennsylvania Route 611 along its entire length with the exception of its northernmost part between Old York Road and Pennsylvania Route 309 (Cheltenham Avenue) and the southernmost part south of Interstate 95. Broad Street runs along a north–south axis between 13th Street and 15th Street, containing what would otherwise be known as 14th Street in the Philadelphia grid plan. It is interrupted by Philadelphia City Hall, which stands where Broad and Market Street would intersect in the center of the city. The streets of Penn Square, Juniper Street, John F. Kennedy Boulevard, and 15th Street form a circle around City Hall at this point. It is one of the earliest planned streets in the United States, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a continuous north–south street, planned by surveyor Thomas Holme and developed for Philadelphia in 1681.Broad Street is served by many public transit routes, including SEPTA's Broad Street Line subway and several SEPTA City Bus routes.