When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.
Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.
___________________________
In the United States, the “old” architecture is relatively young, when compared with how those things are reckoned across the pond, and also when compared with our neighbors in the Americas, most of whom have larger numbers of well-preserved Native architecture.
That being the case, when you’re looking for old beautiful buildings in the U.S., you’re often looking for colonial period buildings. Perhaps the most famous of those buildings is in Philadelphia, PA..
Independence Hall – arguably the most important location in the founding of the United States – was constructed in a Georgian, colonial period style, only a few decades before it became the location for the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence AND the U.S. Constitution. It might surprise most people to know, though, that there was much dispute over the construction, and that a lot of what stands now is the product of later renovations and restorations.
Does that make its status as a symbol of the United States even more fitting? Perhaps so. (More via wiki)
Preparation for construction
By the spring of 1729, there were proposals to build a state house in Philadelphia, and 2,000 pounds sterling were committed to the project. A committee including Thomas Lawrence, John Kearsley, and Andrew Hamilton was charged with selecting a site for the building’s construction, acquiring plans for it, and contracting a company for its construction. Hamilton and his future son-in-law William Allen, who was later chief justice of the Province of Pennsylvania, were named trustees and were authorized to purchase the land for the proposed state house. By October 1730, they had purchased lots on Chestnut Street for the building.
By 1732, Hamilton acquired the deed for Lot no. 2 from surveyor David Powell, who was paid for his work on the lot, but tensions began arising among the committee members. Kearsley and Hamilton disagreed on a number of issues concerning the state house. Kearsley, who designed Christ Church and St. Peter’s Church in Philadelphia, had plans for the design, but so did Hamilton. The two men also disagreed on the building’s site; Kearsley sought to have it constructed on High Street, which is present-day Market Street, and Hamilton favored Chestnut Street. Lawrence said nothing on the matter of its location.
The disagreements escalated to the point where arbitration was needed. On August 8, 1733, Hamilton brought the matter before the Provincial Assembly. He explained that Kearsley did not approve of his plans for the state house’s location and architecture and argued that the assembly had not agreed to these decisions. Three days later, Hamilton showed his plans for the state house to the assembly, which accepted them. On August 14, the assembly sided with Hamilton, granting him full authority over the project, and the current site on the south side of Chestnut Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets was chosen as its location. Ground was broken for construction soon after.
Structure
Independence Hall has a red brick facade, designed in Georgian style. It consists of a central building with belltower and steeple, attached to two smaller wings via arcaded hyphens. The highest point to the tip of the steeple spire is 168 feet 7+1⁄4 inches (51.391 m) above the ground.
The State House was built between 1732 and 1753, designed by Edmund Woolley and Andrew Hamilton, and built by Woolley. Its construction was commissioned by the Pennsylvania colonial legislature which paid for construction as funds were available, so it was finished piecemeal. It was initially inhabited by the colonial government of Pennsylvania as its State House, from 1732 to 1799.
In 1752, when Isaac Norris was selecting a man to build the first clock for the State House he chose Thomas Stretch, the son of Peter Stretch his old friend and fellow council member, to do the job.
In 1753, Stretch erected a giant clock at the building’s west end that resembled a tall clock (grandfather clock). The 40-foot-tall (12 m) limestone base was capped with a 14-foot (4.3 m) wooden case surrounding the clock’s face, which was carved by cabinetmaker Samuel Harding. The clock was removed about 1830. The clock’s dials were mounted at the east and west ends of the main building connected by rods to the clock movement in the middle of the building. A new clock was designed and installed by Isaiah Lukens in 1828. The Lukens clock ran consecutively for eight days, “with four copper dials on each side that measured eight feet in diameter and clockworks that ensured sufficient power to strike the four-thousand pound bell made by John Wilbank.” The Lukens clock remained in Independence Hall until 1877.
The acquisition of the original clock and bell by the Pennsylvania Colonial Assembly is closely related to the acquisition of the Liberty Bell. By mid-1753, the clock had been installed in the State House attic, but it was six years before Thomas Stretch received any pay for it.
Demolition and reconstruction
While the shell of the central portion of the building is original, the side wings, steeple and much of the interior were reconstructed much later. In 1781, the Pennsylvania Assembly had the wooden steeple removed from the main building. The steeple had rotted and weakened to a dangerous extent by 1773, but it was not until 1781 that the Assembly had it removed and had the brick tower covered with a hipped roof. A more elaborate steeple, designed by William Strickland, was added in 1828.
The original wings and hyphens (connecting corridors) were demolished and replaced in 1812. In 1898, these were in turn demolished and replaced with reconstructions of the original wings.
The building was renovated numerous times in the 19th and 20th century. The current interior is a mid-20th-century reconstruction by the National Park Service with the public rooms restored to their 18th-century appearance.
During the summer of 1973, a replica of the Thomas Stretch clock was restored to Independence Hall.
The second-floor Governor’s Council Chamber, furnished with important examples of the era by the National Park Service, includes a musical tall case clock made by Peter Stretch, c. 1740, one of the most prominent clockmakers in early America and father of Thomas Stretch.
Two smaller buildings adjoin the wings of Independence Hall: Old City Hall to the east, and Congress Hall to the west. These three buildings are together on a city block known as Independence Square, along with Philosophical Hall, the original home of the American Philosophical Society. Since its construction in the mid-20th century, to the north has been Independence Mall, which includes the current home of the Liberty Bell.
For a visual tour of the building, I invite you to take the virtual tour below:
