Thursday, September 10, 2026

Question: An unwritten agreement used to keep Philadelphia buildings from rising above a statue of which famous figure atop City Hall?

Answer: William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. From City Hall’s completion in 1901 until 1987, no building in Philadelphia rose higher than the 37-foot bronze statue of Penn crowning its tower, a tradition finally broken by the One Liberty Place skyscraper. Superstitious fans blamed the “Curse of Billy Penn” for the city’s championship drought, which lifted in 2008, the same year a small Penn statuette was affixed atop the Comcast Center, then the city’s tallest building.