An architectural declaration of independence

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has piqued my obsession with the architecture of its birthplace. Of prime appeal for me is how Independence Hall in Philadelphia (built 1732-1753 as the Pennsylvania State House) was not only designed to create the breathing room, elbow room and room to grow for Continental Congress to debate, shape and ratify this pivotal parchment, followed by the Constitution in 1787, but also conceived with the foresight of America's future expansion and the architectural user-friendliness it would require.

This 1752 drawing shows that the State House had its hip-roofed wings, linked to the headhouse by arcaded hyphens, from the beginning. This civic symmetry touted the edifice's central significance as the seat of the local government.

Independence Hall about 1776. Courtesy of the National Park Service.

The Pennsylvania State House was originally planned with this tripartite arrangement (by 1776, the wings were extended with wooden sheds, most likely for storage of firewood, ammo, animals and such) with the logical intent to distribute and compartmentalize its various bureaucratic functions into separate entities for the sake of efficiency of operation, clarity of location, and hierarchy of social standing. In the central headhouse sat Pennsylvania's Legislative Assembly, Executive Council and Judicial Courts, as well as the Long Gallery the colonial governor used for banquets and public events. 

Independence Hall Tower (1750). Photo by Greg Balfour Evans.

All these government entities were solemnly topped, thereby unified as one architectural composition, around 1750 by the cupola-crowned tower, which landmarked the Pennsylvania State House in a way that signified its supremacy and clarified the carillon of its bells throughout the land of Philadelphia. 

Yes, it was in this tower that the Liberty Bell rang, until its crack reduced it to a sculptural relic of its age, but emblazoned it with its own Mark of Zorro of the justice the founders fought for and the rebellion by which they won us our country.

The West Wing, as its houselike form suggests, housed living quarters for doorkeepers of the Pennsylvania Assembly and books for the Library Company of Philadelphia, which Benjamin Franklin had founded in 1731 to make books accessible to all.

Today the West Wing proudly displays the Great Essentials, original printed copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, paying homage to those founding charters that were debated and drafted in the great room next door.

The identical East Wing stored public documents and governmental paperwork, so that the governing bodies would not be buried in paper as they politicked. Today the East Wing houses the America's National Parks store, a gift shop that sells historical books, 250th-anniversary souvenirs, and mementos such as magnets, postcards, and miniature Liberty Bells. Proceeds from their sales directly fund education and preservation programs at the Independence National Historical Park.

The central foyer, bridal stair, and Palladian window clue us into the Hall's sheer expanse by ushering us up to the grand rooms. We see how architects Andrew Hamilton and Edmund Woolley distributed the Hall's load-bearing columns to create free-flowing space. 

Palladian window, Independence Hall. Photo by JG Photography.

This space was brightly illuminated with a Palladian window and double-height side windows. This composition of space amd light expressed the freedom the Hall's Founding Fathers envisioned for the colonies that were represented there.

The ornate woodwork – banisters, scrolls, wainscoting, pediments, Palladian window, fluted Ionic pilasters, cornices, crown moldings – gave historical framework to the Liberty Bell until its 1976 relocation to accommodate more tourists.

Today the bell hangs solo in the ultramodern Liberty Bell Center, in plain window-wall sight of its old home but bereft of its historical milieu. Yet this new setting sheds new light and space on the bell's fortes and flaws.

Now we clearly see the wood yoke, its metal ties and bolts, the relief lettering of its recasters' names (Pass & Stow), the clapper, the braces, the rim frayed by souvenir  hunters' pinching fingers, and the crack – which was not caused solely by ringing, but mainly by repairs gone awry. In 1846, to ring the bell for George Washington's birthday, the existing hairline crack was drill-widened to retard it and reduce its buzz when rung. (Forty drill-marks can be seen along the seam.) This worked at first – the ringing was "clear as a bell" on the Founding Father's anniversary – but soon the fissure spread, silencing the chime for good.

Nonetheless, the crack has become symbolic of the struggle and strain with which our Founders fought for our freedom, emerging scarred and cracked but largely intact. The crack is also a distinguishing mark of recognition that sets this bell apart from others, much as how the Leaning Tower of Pisa derives its tourist appeal from its tilt.

The bright, spacious Assembly Room supplied the requisite sunshine, elbow-room and elegance for Pennsylvania Assembly meetings, ratification of the Declaration on July 4, 1776, the signing of it on August 2, and the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787.

Congress Voting Independence (1784-1801, Robert Edge Pine & Edward Savage)

The room's ornamental restraint and high coved ceiling lent a sense of civic grace and spatial openness to those occasions (as shown here in Congress Voting Independence (right), a painting begun in 1784 by Robert Edge Pine and completed in 1801 by Edward Savage) without excessive visual distractions...

Assembly Room, Independence Hall, shown in 1856, by Max Rosenthal.

...though at one time there were more of those, as shown in this 1856 painting by Max Rosenthal (left)
and in the 1905 photograph (below), both done after the room was redone in 1833.

Assembly Room, Independence Hall, 1905. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

At that time it received an elaborate crown molding of triglyphs, triple wall panels, wider fluted pilasters with carved capitals, and a lavish crystal chandelier. In the mid-1900s the room was restored to a semblance of its original appearance to boost its tourist appeal. This was a mistake, because the 1833 remodeling had historical value of its own and was compatible with the Founders' vision for a democratic but civilized society. The rows of triglyphs nobly symbolized the peaceable meeting-house assembly of multiple delegates and citizens our democracy was founded on, and the triple wall panels served as handsome display frames for pictures of past presidents.

Photo by Corlia van Wyk.

Photo by R. Wallace.

The open-scrolled pediment (left), carved with a scallop-shell surrounded by a leaf frieze, crowns the central seat of the President of Continental Congress (right). 

This was the perfect regal mitre for John Hancock to enscribe his famed signature on the Declaration, and for George Washington to preside over the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It is the only feature of the room's 18th-century woodwork to survive the 1833 remodeling. The "Rising Sun" chair, at which Hancock and Washington sat for those milestone episodes, is an English Chippendale chair carved on its crest with the appropriate images of a half-sun, a Liberty pole, and a Phrygian cap, aptly symbolizing the liberty gained through the Revolution.

Also here is the Syng Inkstand, made of fine silver by local silversmith Philip Syng in 1752, into which 56 Continental Congressmen dipped their quill pens to "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" by signing Timothy Matlack's scribed parchment of the Declaration.

Declaration of Independence (1786-1818, John Trumbull).

But most of all I can hear the strains of "Sit down, John!" and "Someone oughta open up a window!" echo through the chamber in the movie 1776 as John Adams implores a reluctant Congress to "Vote yes! Vote for independency!" and rants, "We piddle, twiddle, and resolve, not one damn thing do we solve!" in his perpetual plaint about the political inefficiency Independence Hall's architects sought to curb.

To minimize piddling and twiddling and maximize resolution, they conceived the Committee Room. Pedimented doors provided a tasteful setting for the Assembly's committees to resolve conflicts and for local militia to store ammo.

The Governor's Council Chambers provided wood-panel warmth and fireplace radiance for colonial governors' meetings with the Council to green-light or red-light legislation the popularly elected Pennsylvania Assembly had passed.

The Supreme Court Chamber was an incubator for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's growth in, well, supremacy, as a model for the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Fluted pilasters, triglyph friezes, pediments, turned-baluster rails, and a painting of the Pennsylvania Coat of Arms (replacing King George III's in 1785) lent learned solemnity to the chamber. The trio of arches signified the open democracy to come...

...as did the Long Room, a 100-foot chamber spanning the entire northern front of the Hall's headhouse, carefully designed with no obstructing columns or walls, so that the colonial governor of Pennsylvania could pack it to capacity for his receptions and banquets. 

The Artist in His Museum (1822, Charles Willson Peale).

This floor-through space came in equally handy as a hospital/jail for wounded colonial prisoners of war during the British Army's occupation of Philadelphia in 1777-78, and, from 1802 to 1827, an exhibit space for Charles Willson Peale's (left) collection of fossils, shells, rocks, minerals, insects, 700 American birds, painted portraits by Charles and Rembrandt Peale (his son), and a massive fossilized mastodon skeleton. This was one of America's first natural history museums, giving rise to New York's American Museum of Natural History and Boston's Museum of Science. And to think that it all began where it all began!

Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the bastion of many beginnings – architectural, social, political, scientific – and provided generous, open, well-designed space for the American experiment in participatory democracy to develop, flourish, and inspire other nations.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Twenty (and fifty) years after

Attack of the World Trade Center, New York City, September 11, 2001. Photo by Evan Giniger.

Remains of 6, 7, and 1 WTC on September 17, 2001. 
U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer's Mate Eric J. Tilford.

On this 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 devastation of New York's World Trade Center by terrorist-hijacked airplanes, I'm sure the minds of all who were around back then and not too young to remember that cataclysm that claimed 2,606 lives (plus 125 in the Pentagon attack and 44 in the diverted plane crash in Shanksville, Pa.) still explode with stories that would fill all the gigabytes in all the digital archives in the world.

September 11, 2001. Photo by WalkingGeek (CC BY 2.0).

September 11, 2001, taken from a rooftop in Brooklyn and from the Brooklyn
waterfront. Photo by Andrew Lynch (CC BY 2.0).

Many (myself included)  remember just where they were and what they were doing when the news hit them by TV, car radio, phone, Internet, word of mouth, etc. Which is not surprising; due to the advanced communication and information technology we were fortunate to have by then (and without which the passengers of Flight 93 wouldn't have been able to prevent their hijackers from doing more damage), the impact of this "shot heard [or seen or felt] 'round the world" was far more far-reaching, time-halting and panic-inducing than the others throughout history, including John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, the 1883 volcanic eruption on Krakatoa heard 3,000 miles away, and, of course, the initial musket-fire of the 1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord that gave rise to that locution in "Concord Hymn," Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 tribute to that historic start of the Revolutionary War.

My history with the World Trade Center goes back a good 50 years when I lived in New York and was first learning, to my chagrin, that a new skyscraper project was going to cop the "World's Tallest" title from a building that made me proud to be a New Yorker as I gazed in awe at my bronze souvenir model of it. My treasure was emblazoned in bold block lettering on each side of its base as follows: on one side, "1,472 FEET"; on another, "WORLD'S TALLEST"; and on another, "EMPIRE STATE BUILDING." In fact, that year (1971) my father decided to take my mother and me to visit this prized icon of Superman single-bounding and King Kong climbing and gawk at its cityscape views before it lost its Royal Highness crown to the new World Trade Center the city was all abuzz about.

Empire State Building, New York, looking up from its
5th Avenue entrance. Photo by Danny Thomas.

This low-angle view of the Empire State Building was my first close-up glimpse of it, from the way-down-there perspective of a small 9-year-old. And yet I could spot the tip of the top high in the sky from there. Which showed how well architects Shreve, Lamb & Harmon were blending their gentle giant into its neighborhood, with a base at a height that was level with its neighbors so it wouldn't seem so overwhelming, and that gave it a firm grounding against toppling in the wind (or from King Kong's ascent). 

It also showed how well the architects were following New York's 1916 Zoning Resolution mandating massing setbacks for upper levels of skyscrapers so they would not cast cavernous shadows on the streetscape – a law the World Trade Center boldly defied in the first straight-up, shadow-casting Twin Towers since the 1915 Equitable Building in Lower Manhattan (below) that provoked that law. 

Equitable Building, New York (1915, Ernest P. Graham). Photo by Yottabytedev.

Empire State Building, New York, 86th-floor observation deck. Photo: Daniel Penfield.

Below is a sense of the jaw-dropping, eye-popping panorama of the New York skyline I experienced in swoops and soars from the Empire State Building's 86th-floor observation deck. It was chilling, thrilling and fulfilling to spot familiar landmarks, neighborhoods, parks, streets, rivers, and distant views of New Jersey and Connecticut from sky-high.

World Trade Center topping-off, 1973. Courtesy of Facebook.

Our family outing (or upping) to the Empire's apogee was, of course, one of the last times anyone could experience the breathtaking, bird-swooping, skydiving city vistas of the Empire State Building as the World's Tallest, before the topping-off of Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Center in 1973 enabled those newborn twins to stake their claim to that title (until Chicago's Sears Tower, now Willis Tower, surpassed them the following year, at 1,451 feet, as opposed to 1 WTC's 1,368 and 2 WTC's 1,362).

Perhaps I moved to Boston at the right time (1972) so I wouldn't have to witness the beheading of the sky-crown of my prized Empire landmark – which, technically, was still the tallest including its antenna and spire, at 1,454 feet, beaten out only by One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet, in 2014 (see below).

Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on World Trade Center. US Park Police photo by Eugene Kuziw. 

But luckily, my move out of New York shielded me from firsthand experience of the 9/11/01 destruction of the Twin Towers (though the attackers' takeoff from Boston's Logan Airport put me not far away from where it all began – scary). I saw the calamity live on TV, from the planes to the plunges, while working at Community Newspaper Company in Needham, Massachusetts.

Collapse of South Tower, 9/11, before and after. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

All work stopped cold as all eyes fixated on our office TV screens and all news reporting priorities abruptly shifted to the unfathomable event that had just exploded before our eyes. The world suddenly turned to quiet fear, terror and shock as each of us wondered and worried if we'd be "next."

FDNY firefighter eyes a remnant of a WTC tower. U.S. Navy photo by Jim Watson.

Thus the iconic twosome soar of the Twin Towers that had monumentally anchored the tip of Lower Manhattan and the entry point of New York Harbor for 28 years was instantly replaced in the public eye by the iconic Gothic ruins of their sharded, smoky remains.

These in-your-face images of wanton destruction predominated the media for years as the body-search, site cleanup, War on Terror, memorial speculations and contests, and nasty politicking over how the hell to redevelop a prominent site of world trade that was gone in a flash went on and on.

One World Trade Center, New York (2014, David Childs). Photo: Praneeth Thalla.

Fast-forward 13 years to the dedication of the new victor ludorum of "New York's Tallest" prestige, One World Trade Center, nobly marking the gravesite of its parents, which are memorialized by two well-fountains framing their footprints with waterfalls cascading down into simulacra of Ground Zero and bearing the names of the fallen around their perimeters. 

Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1 WTC boldly articulates the "United We Stand" aphorism the disaster gave rise to, by uniting ghosts of the Twin Towers in a geometric solid of elongated triangles tapering both ways between the square base and the square roofline rotated a 45-degree angle from the base. At this point the antenna takes over the soar to the patriotic height of 1,776 feet, an apt expression of fortitude in the face of adversity.

Never Forget.