This Curse is 'Outta Here'
by Miles Aion, an undergraduate journalist student at Temple University

On Wednesday, October 29, the streets of Philadelphia were filled with celebration as they hadn’t been for 28 years. All cities endure sports slumps, but this one—close calls but no championships in a combined 100 seasons of pro basketball, hockey, football, and baseball—had a culprit: the Curse of Billy Penn. 

In 1871, construction began on Philadelphia’s City Hall.  That same year the Philadelphia Athletics narrowly beat out the Boston Red Socks for total wins.  The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players crowned the Athletics their first pennant winners.  It was the first championship of America’s first pro baseball league.

As City Hall neared completion, Alexander Calder’s 35 foot statue of Philadelphia’s founder, William Penn, was hoisted to the top of the tower. 

City Hall was completed in 1901 and standing at 548 feet, it was the tallest occupied building in the world. Sometime later, Philadelphia planners and real estate developers decided that no building should surpass it in height—William Penn’s vision should indeed never be shrouded.

As the agreement endured into the second half of the 20th century, Philadelphia sports teams looked a lot like those original Athletics.  The Flyers won two Stanley Cups; the Phillies and Eagles regularly made the playoffs and both teams played for a championship in 1980.  That year the Phillies won their first World Series.  Then, in 1983, the 76ers beat the L.A. Lakers and won the NBA championship. 

The next year, developer Willard Rouse broke ground on a handsome new tower in what would become a new office district.  Architect Helmut Jahn’s Liberty Place was 945 feet tall, 397 feet taller than the top of Billy Penn’s hat.  The “gentleman’s agreement” was broken.

In 1987, the year Liberty Place was complete, the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup in a heartbreaking 7th game; for the next 20 years, no other team would even come so close.  It seemed Philadelphia teams were cursed—by Billy Penn!   

Last June, construction workers topped off a new skyscraper, Comcast Center, this one 30 feet taller than Liberty Place, the tallest in Philadelphia.  In placing the last piece of steel at the top of the building, a pair of workers saw an opportunity to undo the curse.  So John Joyce and Dan Ginion attached a small William Penn figurine to the highest beam, returning the city’s founder to his proper place of honor.

Just one year, four months and eleven days later, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Cole Hamels, and the rest of the 2008 Phillies, held their World Series trophy up to the highest sky.  Local television stations declared the curse over: “In 2007, Billy Penn was put back in the clouds. On October 29, the rest of the city joined him.”

*Special thanks to Nathaniel Popkin for his help

DECEMBER PICKS
we think you'll like...
(click on each below to view)

Philadelphia's
Fairmount Park
by James D. Ristine



Philadeplhia H2O
Adam Levine on Philly's rivers, streams and drainage systems



My Architect
An Academy Award nominee by Nathaniel Kahn

Taste of Philadelphia
Take a tour & learn the story behind the Reading Terminal Market