The Old Man, Weird Histories and the Curse of Billy Penn

I ended up getting introduced to this guy Jim Murphy. He's a local character who has been here for years, and stumbled into being a passionate micro-historian of Philadelphia. Not the grand histories you read about in school about civil wars and revolutions, but the history of tiny buildings, and curses, and historic churches. The type of stuff you'll see on historic society placards or hear about in local pub quiz nights.

So Jim has writtenReal Philly History, Real Fast. I grabbed coffee with him at La Colombe near City Hall a few weeks ago. He showed up wearing a windbreaker, a Phillies cap and we chatted about random Philly stuff. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, particularly as I'm not a history guy, but I do like weird facts.

He was going through the strange history of this city, the kind of stuff he writes down, and at some point he pointed up at the William Penn statue on top of City Hall and told me it weighed over twenty tons.

I called BS. It seemed insane to make a statue solid metal (metal is expensive and dense). And even if you did do that, to then put it on the top of a building would be architecturally insane, i.e., you'd have to reinforce the building enormously to handle that unexpected weight. So I googled it while we were grabbing coffee.

He was right. It is twenty-seven tons, cast in bronze by Alexander Milne Calder (of the famous Calder arts family) and hoisted onto the tower in 1894 (with probably one hell of a crane).

Another random fact he mentioned is that Philadelphia is the only city in the world that bombed itself. I looked that up sometime after the coffee, and the story is fascinating. Long-story short (and left for another day), back in the mid-80s, a Black Liberation group got into a standoff with the Philly Police and Fire Departments, where over 10,000 bullets were fired. When the group refused to surrender, Philadelphia dropped a small bomb on the roof of the building from a helicopter and let the block burn for about 2 hours. 11 people died and a full city block burned down. A story for another day.

But the curse of Billy Penn was what we spent most of our time talking about. It's one most Philadelphians have heard about: Philly used to have great sports teams as long as no one built a building taller than the statue of Billy Penn, which is 547 feet off the ground. It was an unofficial handshake agreement amongst businesspeople, architects and city government.

Then in March 1987 One Liberty Place opened three blocks away. It is 945 feet tall and the curse was cast.

Immediately, the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup in 1987, and the Phillies lost the 1993 World Series. The 76ers and Eagles all had bad runs for decades, often getting close but never winning the cup/trophy/pennant/etc.

Most serious sports fans are at least a bit superstitious, and Philadelphians probably more so. In fact, there's an Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode on just this, where Charlie follows a whole bunch of rituals from drinking paint to crossing himself, even while painfully caught in a bear trap, to help the Eagles win (which they did, no doubt thanks to his religiously observing his rituals).

So, when the ironworkers raised the final beam on the Comcast Center in 2007, two of them bolted a small William Penn figurine to the beam, with the idea that, since they couldn't move the 20-ton statue, they'd at least give a spiritual nod to the curse. The Phillies won the World Series that October, and a year later Comcast ran an ad during the parade broadcast that was just that figurine sitting on top of the Comcast Center.

Since then we've had up and down years, but the Birds did win Super Bowl LIX against the Chiefs, so the curse is officially broken.

But being a superstitious lot who want our home teams to win, we have a new version of the rule. Rather than nothing taller than the big Billy Penn statue, now, every new tallest building that's built in Philly usually adds a small figure of Billy Penn at its apex, to fend off the curse.

All this learned from a guy who just loves the weird history of the City of Statutory Superstition!

Notes, Sources, and Methodology

Jim’s stories are his, but the facts underneath them check out. The MOVE bombing was May 13, 1985: police dropped a bomb on the rowhouse on Osborn Street from a state police helicopter, 11 people died (six adults, five children), and more than 10,000 rounds went into the standoff (see the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia and the MOVE bombing article). The statue’s 27 tons come from Wikipedia’s William Penn (Calder) entry and NBC News’ 2017 look at its restoration. The curse’s history is on Wikipedia, and his own book is Real Philly History, Real Fast.

On the Always Sunny episode. Charlie’s superstitions are a running bit rather than one scene: the green paint in season 11’s ‘Charlie Catches a Leprechaun’, the bear trap in ‘Charlie’s Home Alone’ and the Eagles in ‘The Gang Wins the Big Game’, both season 13 (see the episode guide).

One caveat. ‘The only city in the world to have bombed itself’ is Jim’s line. The accounts I could source describe Philadelphia as ‘the city that bombed itself’ — a smaller claim than the one he made.

https://nickjain.com/blog/the-old-man-and-the-curse-of-billy-penn