Independence Hall

Independence Hall in Philadelphia is where the United States was founded. In its Assembly Room the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and eleven years later delegates to the Constitutional Convention drafted and signed the United States Constitution. No other building is so closely tied to the birth of the American republic.

Originally built as the Pennsylvania State House, the modest Georgian brick building has become a global symbol of representative government — an influence recognized in 1979 when UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site. It anchors Independence National Historical Park in the heart of Philadelphia.

Construction of the Pennsylvania State House began in 1732 to house the colonial legislature of the Province of Pennsylvania. Designed in the Georgian style — the design is attributed to the lawyer Andrew Hamilton, with master builder Edmund Woolley — the red-brick building was largely complete by 1753, when a bell later famous as the Liberty Bell was hung in its tower.

As tensions with Britain grew, the building became the meeting place of the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1775. There, on July 4, 1776, the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Through the Revolutionary War the Congress directed the war effort from these rooms, and the building became the stage for the new nation's earliest acts of self-government.

In the summer of 1787, delegates returned to the same Assembly Room for the Constitutional Convention, where they drafted and signed the U.S. Constitution. The building was later restored and preserved; in 1948 Congress established Independence National Historical Park, placing the hall in the care of the National Park Service, and in 1979 it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.