[volguus zildrohar]

Philadelphia City Hall is the tallest occupiable masonry building in the world, Washington Monument be damned. It does have a steel support structure under the crown to support the weight of the 37-ton William Penn statue but there are no steel support members for the building itself. At over 631,000 square feet, it counts among the largest buildings in Philadelphia but it isn't the largest municipal building in the country anymore (for a short period it was the world's tallest building). That's another of those 'old' Philadelphia facts that's rarely corrected - it was only a couple of years ago we all learned a couple of skyscrapers weren't actually as tall as everyone thought they were.

The building is a marvel, inside and out and houses the city's only public observation deck, surprisingly. The top of the statue's hat (547 feet, 11 inches) was the city's unofficial height limit for decades though only one building constructed prior to the 80's dared to rise higher than 491 feet.