oo.. *excellent* picture.
it looks *so* much better with the lights.

Why is it that the top of city hall is blazin' white, when compared to the rest of the building? Even the cleaned side of the buiding looks dirty comparatively.

They're built out of two different kinds of material. Below is stone - granite? marble? - above is I think clad in some kind of metal. Others will know in more detail. But, at any rate, that explains the two-tone effect.

I believe both are stone, the building has marble, granite and limestone.
Using bands of many different materials is a way to show off the importance of the City. That's something I believe the romans started, use hoizontal bands of stone from many different places to emphasize all the areas you control. That strong banding is still visible in many "Romanesque" buildings.

Before the 1850s, Philadelphia buildings didn't have much granite or mareble- because there wasn't any locally.

Then, up to the Civil War, decorative stone was available but it was expensive, so you only see small pieces, like marble steps, granite windowsills after the 1850s when the

After the Civil War, you had transcontintal railroad and more connections, and with the Pennsylvania & Reading Railroads in Philly, the architects could used marble and granite from far away, and you see HUGE pieces of marble used on the faces of buildings.

Hal

Actually, the cap of the tower is metal and it is painted.

When they started the renovations, they started on the tower and they could not match the color (with prior paint or the stone) and get the sort of protective measures that they needed.

Thus, the top of city hall is sort of a light battleship gray.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

Well, he's right- the metal part of the tower actually starts below the clock, not above the clock.

I'd always thought the porton where the clock had been built of masonry with reinforcement



and only the somewhat conical spire was cast iron...

Interesting-

I'd heard that lots of the interior ironwork was painted and cast to look like carved wood. They did that to reduce fire hazards in the era of gas flame lighting, so all of the interior windows and doors that look like wood are actually iron.

I didn't think they would also take the exterior ironwork was and make it and paint it to look like stone.


Hal

The paint that they chose had to be specially made to withstand the environmental onslaught and to protect the metal. The strangely different color and look is a result.

__________________
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

I was down at the lighting ceremony and it was an alright event.

The lights run on photocells that are turned on at dusk and take four minutes to reach max luminosity.

The tower itself was lit in 2000 but they stopped last year - I assume in anticipation of this.

The City Hall lighting, as you may know, culminates the entire process of lighting The Parkway from The Art Museum to City Hall.

City Hall is really starting to look beautiful. They just need to hurry up with whatever restoration project has all that scaffolding on the clock tower.

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