One Liberty Place

This guide to One Liberty Place in Philadelphia opens on the top one hundred forty-six feet of the tower, space that earns not one square foot of rent because it isn't floors, it's spire. It traces developer Willard Rouse's decision to break the city's unwritten rule against building higher than William Penn's statue on City Hall, and the quiet height war that followed with architect Helmut Jahn revising his drawings against a rival tower across town. The crown itself borrows its silhouette from New York's Chrysler Building, set atop a steel tube-in-tube frame rising from granite and blue glass.