December 27, 2006
Nineteen Years at the Top
A tribute to One Liberty Place.
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.
Photos by author via SkyscraperSunset.com.
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I love this write up and especially love the photos, but I don't see the second Philadelphia skyscrapper boom as eally part of a larger trend. You cite the Freedom tower in New York, but that is more of an anomaly as it is a reaction to Sept 11 and really only being built because the world trade center was knocked down.
Thanks for the compliments and good point about the Freedom Tower being a reaction to 9/11. However, there is something of a larger trend going on in the US right now. As I mentioned in the article, no top 25 skyscrapers have been completed between 1992 and 2006. However, several will be inserted into the top 25 in the next couple years, some of which are already under construction.
I actually started to include some of them in the write-up but it became a bit wordy. But those that I can name off the top of my head are the Comcast Center, Freedom Tower, Trump Tower in Chicago, and NY Times Tower in NYC. Various other proposals are in the works all over the US and a few will break ground in 2007 or 2008.
By the way, some of the links in the post are dead due to one of IPowerWeb's servers crapping out today.