User:GhostRiver/billy penn

The Curse of Billy Penn was an urban legend and popular explanation for the championship drought that all major professional sports teams based in Philadelphia experienced between 1987 and 2008. The drought was attributed to the construction of One Liberty Place, an 848 foot skyscraper in Center City, Philadelphia. The tower's height broke a longstanding gentleman's agreement that no building in the city could rise above 548 ft, the height of the William Penn statue atop City Hall.

Prior to the construction of One Liberty place, the last area sports team to win their respective championship were the Philadelphia 76ers, who swept the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals. The curse is believed to have ended on October 29, 2008, when the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to capture the 2008 World Series.

Philadelphia City Hall
The Scottish-born architect John McArthur Jr., assisted by Thomas Ustick Walter, began constructing Philadelphia City Hall in 1872. Longtime Philadelphia resident Alexander Milne Calder, meanwhile, was tasked with overseeing the production of approximately 250 sculptures that would inhabit the City Hall building. In 1886, Calder was commissioned to construct a bronze statue of the city's founder, William Penn, which would sit atop the building. Calder's project was delayed, as at the time there was no metalworking factory capable of crafting something the size of his intended statue. Tacony Iron and Metal Works agreed to take up the project after its founding in 1899, and on November 6, 1892, William Penn was unveiled in the front courtyard of City Hall. On November 28, 1894, the statue was raised to its final position atop City Hall.

Upon its completion, Calder's statue stood 36 ft tall and weighed 27 t. Made of bronze, it depicts Penn as a young man, holding the Charter of Privileges in one hand. The figure's face points northeast to Penn Treaty Park, where Penn agreed to peace with the native Lenape. Calder disliked this orientation, as it cast the statue's face in shadow for most of the day. From its base to the top of Penn's hat, City Hall stands 548 ft above street level. This was the tallest occupied building in the world until 1909, when the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower was completed in New York City.

Construction of One Liberty Place
During his tenure as the executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission in the 1960s, Edmund Bacon instituted a gentleman's agreement that no new building development would stand taller than the William Penn statue. While the Philadelphia City Council did not approve a bill that would have formalized this agreement, Bacon resisted any attempts by developers to allow the construction of taller buildings. This agreement continued mostly without controversy until March 1984, when Willard Rouse announced his plans for two skyscrapers that would surpass the statue's height. Rouse argued that the flat height limit surrounding the statue did little to preserve its preeminence in the city, and that aligning buildings to allow for viewing corridors of City Hall was more sensible.

Breaking the curse
In 2007, the Comcast Center replaced One Liberty Place as the tallest building in Philadelphia. At the topping out ceremony, construction workers affixed a small statue of Penn to one of the building's beams in the hope of breaking the curse.