Independence Hall

Independence Hall was built between 1732 and 1756 as the Pennsylvania State House, designed by master carpenter Edmund Woolley and lawyer Andrew Hamilton in the Georgian style. Its Assembly Room on the first floor became the meeting place of the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1775, and it was here, in the summer heat of 1776, that delegates from thirteen colonies debated and adopted Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

The same room hosted the Constitutional Convention from May to September 1787, where 55 delegates from twelve states labored through a Philadelphia summer without opening the windows — to prevent eavesdropping — and produced the document that remains the supreme law of the United States. The proceedings were kept secret throughout, and James Madison’s detailed notes on the debates were not published until after his death in 1836. George Washington presided over the convention from the chair at the front of the Assembly Room, the carved sun on its back prompting Benjamin Franklin’s remark at the signing that he could now see it was a rising sun, not a setting one.

The building’s second floor houses the Long Gallery, used for state banquets, and the Governor’s Council Chamber and Supreme Court Chamber. The tower, added in 1828, holds a replica of the bell tower’s original design. Independence Hall was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, recognized alongside the nearby Chestnut Street buildings as a place of universal significance to the history of democratic governance.