288 DAYSSan Francisco · 1915 ⌕
Gazetteer › States & Nations
State building · States & Nations

Pennsylvania Building

Henry Hornbostel's Independence Hall-inspired building, two red-brick wings joined by a columned loggia that became the shrine of the Liberty Bell.

Pennsylvania Building with crowds, postcard
Pennsylvania Building with crowds, postcardUnknown publisher, 1915, public domain

Pennsylvania's building, by Henry Hornbostel of Pittsburgh, borrowed the main features of Independence Hall. It had two gabled red-brick wings joined by a loggia of tall paired columns, set in formal gardens with statues at the four corners. Edward Trumbull painted two murals, 18 by 29 feet, at the ends of the loggia: Penn's treaty with the Indians and the steel industry. Susan Watson's reliefs of an iron puddler and a coal miner stood over the wing doors. There were no exhibits. One wing held an assembly hall, a cinema and a fireproof vault; the other an octagonal parlor, a post office and the Commission's offices.

When the building was dedicated on March 18, 1915, no one knew if the Liberty Bell would come. A petition signed by a quarter of a million California schoolchildren had asked for it, and it crossed the country that summer. On Liberty Bell Day, July 17, 1915, it was paraded up Market Street and Van Ness Avenue to the grounds and installed in the loggia. By day 'a human tide' flowed past it. At night it rolled on a special truck into the vault. It left on November 11, after a night in state beneath the Tower of Jewels.

A human tide poured all day through a loggia of tall double columns between two gabled structures of red brick just westward of the New York Building. This was the shrine of the Liberty Bell...

Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 338

At a glance

  • Cost about $227,000 (Todd; OCR '1227,000'); Condensed Facts gives a $300,000 appropriation.
  • Dedicated March 18, 1915; Pennsylvania Day September 4.
  • Liberty Bell arrived July 17, 1915; farewell ceremonies November 10; departed November 11.
  • Loggia murals by Edward Trumbull, 18 x 29 ft each.

Afterward

Not recorded; presumably auctioned and wrecked. The Liberty Bell returned to Philadelphia.

Where it stood

Pennsylvania Building stood at about 37.80485 N, 122.45007 W on today's map. The whole fairground over the city →

Sources