[8][9][10] It also houses the Philadelphia facilities for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (which also holds session and accepts filings in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh).

[13] in the French Second Empire style of architecture, and was constructed from 1871 to 1901 at a cost of $24 million dollars (late 19th century value of American money).

In that year a storm caused the spire to collapse and so the Philadelphia City Hall then became the tallest masonry building in the world (excluding monuments).

City Hall is a masonry building whose weight is borne by granite and brick walls up to 22 ft (6.7 m) thick.

The stonemason William Struthers and sculptor Alexander Milne Calder were responsible for the more than 250 sculptures, capturing artists, educators, and engineers who embodied American ideals and contributed to this country's genius.

It was the tallest in Philadelphia until 1986 when the construction of One Liberty Place surpassed it,[15] ending the informal gentlemen's agreement that had limited the height of buildings in the city to no higher than the Penn statue.

It is reached in a 6-person elevator whose glass panels allow visitors to see the interior of the iron superstructure that caps the tower and supports the statuary and clocks.

[26] The majority of the restoration was completed by 2007, although some work has continued, including the installation of four new ornamental courtyard gates, based on an original architectural sketch, in December 2015.

The statue was cast at the Tacony Iron Works of Northeast Philadelphia and hoisted to the top of the tower in fourteen sections in 1894, seven years before the building was declared completed in 1901.

[31] Penn's statue is hollow, and a narrow access tunnel through it from beneath in the stone / masonry and steel framing of the clock tower leads to a 22-inch-diameter (56 cm) hatch atop the hat.

[36] The supposed curse ended 22 years later when the Philadelphia Phillies professional Major League Baseball team in the National League won the 2008 World Series, a year and four months after a small William Penn statuette had been affixed to the final steel beam of the Comcast Center during its topping out ceremony in June 2007.

[37] Another Penn statuette was placed on the topmost beam of the Comcast Technology Center in November 2017,[38] and the Eagles won the Super Bowl a few months later.

[42][43] City Hall has been a filming location for several motion pictures including Rocky (1976), Blow Out (1981), Trading Places (1983), Philadelphia (1993), 12 Monkeys (1995), National Treasure (2004), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), and Limitless (2011).