Old City Independence Walk

This is Independence Hall, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and adopted. It was completed in 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House, the capitol of the colonial Province of Pennsylvania, and even then people called it the greatest ornament in the town. It's a fine example of American Georgian architecture, with symmetry, classical proportions and brick with stone accents.

The Second Continental Congress met here from 1775 to 1781. On June 14, 1775, it founded the Continental Army here, and on July 4, 1776, it adopted the Declaration of Independence. From May 25 to September 17, 1787, the building hosted the Constitutional Convention, where the Constitution was debated and drafted. In 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette visited, it was renamed the Hall of Independence.

It became a World Heritage Site in 1979, the centerpiece of Independence National Historical Park.

Inside this building is the Liberty Bell, once simply the State House Bell. The Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly ordered it in 1752 from a London firm later known as the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It carries the words Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof. It cracked the first time it was rung in Philadelphia, and two local workmen, John Pass and John Stow, recast it twice.

Their names are on the bell. It called lawmakers to sessions and citizens to public meetings. It likely rang on July 8, 1776, when the Declaration was first read in public, though no account from the time confirms it. The name Liberty Bell came from abolitionists in the 1830s, who made it their symbol.

Its famous large crack appeared sometime in the first half of the 19th century. It moved out of Independence Hall in 1976, and into this center in 2003.