Philadelphia

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."

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.

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.

City Hall station is a SEPTA subway station in Philadelphia. Located in Center City underneath City Hall, it serves the Broad Street Line. It is the busiest station on the line, serving 57,000 passengers daily. City Hall station is served by local, express, and special "Sport Express" trains. Entrances are located on the east and west sides of City Hall, as well as in the central courtyard.

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.

The Masonic Temple is a historic Masonic building in Philadelphia. Located at 1 North Broad Street, directly across from Philadelphia City Hall, it serves as the headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, Free and Accepted Masons. The Temple features the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania, and receives thousands of visitors every year to view the ornate structure, which includes seven lodge rooms, where today a number of Philadelphia lodges and the Grand Lodge conduct their meetings. The Temple was designed in the medieval Norman style by James H. Windrim, who was 27 years old at the time he won the design competition. The massive granite cornerstone, weighing ten tons, was leveled on St. John the Baptist's Day, June 24, 1868. The ceremonial gavel used on that day by Grand Master Richard Vaux was the same gavel used by President George Washington in leveling the cornerstone of the nation's Capitol building in 1793. The construction was completed five years later, in 1873. The interior, designed by George Herzog, was begun in 1887 and took another fifteen years to finish.The bold and elaborate elevations on Broad and Filbert Streets, especially the beautiful portico of Quincy granite, make it one of the great architectural wonders of Philadelphia. The exterior stone of the building on Broad and Filbert Streets is Cape Ann Syenite from Syne in Upper Egypt. On May 27, 1971, the Temple was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. It was cited in its landmark designation as one of the nation's most elaborate examples of Masonic architecture.

The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, officially The Right Worshipful Grand Lodge of the Most Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania and Masonic Jurisdictions Thereunto Belonging, is the premier masonic organization in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Grand Lodge claims to be the oldest in the United States, and the third oldest in the world after England (est. 1717) and Ireland (est. 1725), having been originally established as the Provincial Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1731. This claim is disputed by both the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and the Grand Lodge of Virginia. Today, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania is the largest Masonic Jurisdiction in the United States, claiming more than 86,000 members at the end of 2020. There are more Freemasons in Pennsylvania than any other State.

Thomas Paine Plaza is an open space park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, named in honor of Thomas Paine. It is the location of the city's Municipal Services Building across from Dilworth Park and City Hall. The design, by Sam Durant and Frank Rizzo, consists of a labyrinth of chain linked fences. The park was redesigned and dedicated by Mayor Michael Nutter in a ribbon cutting ceremony in October 2015.

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.

A statue of Frank Rizzo, sometimes called the Frank L. Rizzo Monument, was installed in Philadelphia, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Erected in 1998, the bronze sculpture was removed in June 2020. Black Lives Matter activists and others protested the statue's presence, and the statue was taken down during the George Floyd protests.

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 Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network (PAGN) was founded in January 1984 by former Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode. The original goal of the program was to combat the spread of graffiti in the Philadelphia area and was led by Tim Spencer. In 1986 another program began within PAGN, named The Mural Arts Project (MAP), and headed by artist Jane Golden. Through the success of both programs in 1991 the city of Philadelphia was awarded the Innovations in American Government Award due to the progress PAGN and MAP had made in the surrounding communities. In 1996 the success of MAP was noted and split off into a separate program and placed under the umbrella of the Philadelphia Recreation Department. From the founding of these programs over 2,500 murals have been created across the city and over 40,000 walls cleaned of graffiti. The Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network currently consists of three programs; Mural Arts Program, Paint Voucher Program, and the Graffiti Abatement Team.