Upper floors and spire of One Liberty Place in 2005
The One Liberty Place Building is currently the second tallest building and skyscraper in the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, after the Comcast Center. It is the 17th tallest building in the United States. Completed in 1987, One Liberty Place has 61 floors and is 945 ft (288 m) tall, only two feet (0.6 m) shorter than the Key Tower in Cleveland, Ohio. Designed by Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Architects, the building's spire echoes that of the Chrysler Building in New York City. After its completion, a slightly smaller sister building, Two Liberty Place, was erected in 1990 within the same complex. Rouse and Associates, which later went public as Liberty Property Trust, developed both One and Two Liberty Place as well as the Comcast Center.
One Liberty Place was locally famous for being the first building to break the gentlemen's agreement not to exceed the 548 ft (167 m) height of the William Penn statue atop Philadelphia City Hall built in 1901. In breaking this agreement, the so-called "Curse of Billy Penn" was born — a Bambino-like hex that supposedly affected the city's major professional sport franchises. From the time One Liberty Place was completed until 2008, Philadelphia's major sports teams (the Eagles, Flyers, Phillies, and 76ers) had all failed to win league championships.[1] This changed on October 29, 2008, when the Phillies defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2008 World Series, effectively ending the Curse.
On January 3, 2005 it was announced that another tower, the Comcast Center, would be completed by early 2008 at a height of 975 feet (297 m). This tower ended One Liberty Place's reign as Philadelphia's tallest building on June 18, 2007, with an official topping-out ceremony led by Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street.
