Another Narrow Escape

Despite this growth of reverence, the Independence Square group had another narrow escape at the end of the next decade. In 1868 the city councils voted to erect new municipal buildings on Independence Square. John McArthur, Jr., who would later become architect of the City Hall on Center Square, produced designs in much the same style as that structure. Bold and flamboyant Second Empire pavilions, scaled to the boulevards of Paris, would surround the square on three sides. Independence Hall would remain forlorn and dwarfed, between the two terminal buildings on Chestnut Street. Over the next few years, the councils rethought the matter and decided to build on Center Square. The approaching Centennial of the Declaration may have influenced this reversal. Soon after ground was broken for the new City Hall, the city councils confirmed the sacred status of the Assembly Room by setting it aside forever as a shrine in 1872. A committee, chaired by Col. Frank M. Etting, commenced work on refurnishing and restoration; in the course of this work four columns were erroneously installed in the Assembly Room. The project expanded to include removal of the paint that had been applied to the exterior marble trim and repair of woodwork in the hallway and stair tower. Etting's committee also dealt with the Supreme Court Room. Covering the bench and other trappings of the judiciary, they fitted the space out as a "National Museum" displaying furnishings, relics, and portraits related to the early history of Pennsylvania and the nation. For the first time the entire first floor of Independence Hall was opened for the enjoyment and education of the public.

In 1895, as the city government prepared to complete its move to the new City Hall, attention turned again to the fate of Independence Hall. In 1896 the Daughters of the American Revolution received authorization from the city to restore, at their own expense, the building's second floor. This was the start of a restoration program that eventually extended to the entire building. The DAR retained T. Mellon Rogers as architect, and Rogers continued in this capacity for the city's restoration of the remainder of the building. The work extended from the interior to the exterior and also involved substantial structural reinforcement. Most dramatically, the fire-proof buildings constructed in 1812 were razed, and wings and arcades resembling the originals were constructed in their place. Unfortunately, although old views were consulted, Rogers seems to have made no attempt to seek out historical documentation or architectural evidence for his work, but apparently based it on a personal vision of eighteenth-century taste. As a result, much of the "restoration" was far from accurate. The wing buildings, for example, differed in dimension and detail from the originals. An even more damaging result of this approach was the destruction of original features, such as the cornice of the Supreme Court Room. These unfortunate actions had one happy result. Rogers's restoration precipitated so much criticism, especially from the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, that the city asked the organization to appoint a subcommittee to advise on Independence Square. Over the next quarter of a century, the committee, under the chairmanship of Horace Wells Sellers, superintended restoration work on all the buildings in the row. In 1912-13 the committee made studies and prepared plans for the restoration of Congress Hall; in 1917 it carried out similar tasks for Old City Hall, although the work on the building was not completed until 1922; from 1921 to 1923 their work on the second floor of Independence Hall eradicated most of T. Mellon Rogers's "ice-cream saloon" colonial. The AIA restorations were landmarks in the field; the architects made careful measurements and subjected the buildings to rigorous architectural analysis. Much of their work at Congress Hall and Old City Hall was so accurate that the National Park Service left it undisturbed in its subsequent restoration of the buildings.

Thus, in the century that followed Lafayette's visit in 1824, the public reverence for the site spread from the Assembly Room to all of Independence Hall and then to its flanking buildings. There was a concomitant growth of interest in the grounds in which the buildings stood. As a public park, Independence Square was subject to continuing rearrangement and maintenance of the landscaping. There was a major effort during the Etting restoration of 1875-76, and in 1915-16, when the mid-nineteenth-century courthouse that had been erected behind Congress Hall was removed, the city undertook extensive relandscaping, producing the design of the square that remains today. Like the city's restoration of Independence Hall, the plan for the square depended on contemporary perceptions of eighteenth-century landscape design rather than on historical documentation. Nevertheless, the desire to provide the buildings on Independence Square with an appropriate setting was powerful, and would recur in different forms and under different auspices for the next fifty years.