Head & Shoulders Above the Rest

It used to be that Philadelphia's City Hall was the tallest building in town. Until 1987, when One Liberty Place broke the "gentlemen's agreement" not to exceed the height of City Hall, the statue of William Penn atop City Hall's tower was, literally, head and shoulders above the rest of the city. (Even the 33 story P.S.F.S. Building is shorter.) In the last 20 years since One Liberty Place was completed, several more buildings have exceeded the height of City Hall, and the 8th building to do so is the newly-completed Comcast Center.

Designed by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, the building opened in June of this year. The 975 foot tall skyscraper is 427 feet (80%) taller than City Hall and 30 feet taller than the spire of One Liberty Place, which is now the second tallest building in the city. Though in general it is a tall and slender building with good vertical proportions, it does looks a little chunky and out of context when driving into the city on the Schuylkill Expressway. This gives an unfortunate first impression of the building, which seems more reasonable scaled when viewed from other points throughout the city.

The curtain wall is simple and sleek, though the clear glass at the corners and top does look a little funny. Since it is much easier on those portions of the building to see inside to the office floors beyond, from a distance, it almost looks as if the building is surrounded with scaffolding or that the floors are not finished. I imagine that this perception changes with the weather, though. When we were in Philadelphia for Independence Day weekend this year, it was mostly overcast, gray, and a little bit rainy. It is a bit strange, I admit, but I really liked the building in that kind of weather. Under this certain kind of light, the all-glass tower seemed to blend in well with the sky and the city and became a bit more ephemeral instead of massive. It is a huge building after all!

One particularly interesting feature of the building was its lobby and atrium. The multi-story public atrium showcases a unique work of art called Humanity in Motion, by sculptor Jonathan Borofsky, in which life-size figures walk across stainless steel tubes traversing the upper portions of the atrium. At the lobby level, Borofsky has even placed "spectators" to watch their acrobatic balancing act.



The lobby also showcases a pretty amazing techno-wall of LEDs. The wall frequently shows a number of still and moving images, though it can also be programmed to appear just like the wood paneling that makes up the rest of the lobby, as well!