Independence Hall

Independence Hall is a Georgian-style brick building on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Its Assembly Room, where the Pennsylvania legislature met, was lent to the Second Continental Congress and later to the Constitutional Convention. The building stands within Independence National Historical Park, which also includes the Liberty Bell and sites associated with Benjamin Franklin.

Construction began in 1732 on a building to house all three branches of Pennsylvania’s colonial government. In 1775, in its Assembly Room, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander in chief of the Continental Army; in July 1776 it voted for independence and adopted the Declaration there. The Articles of Confederation officially took effect in the building in 1781, and in the summer of 1787 delegates to the Constitutional Convention met behind its closed windows to write the Constitution.

The building’s later history includes darker chapters: in the nineteenth century, federal hearings under the fugitive slave laws were held here, deciding whether people claimed as escaped slaves would be returned to bondage. Its symbolic status as the “birthplace” of American democracy has made it a place where that democracy’s promises and failures are both remembered.