Independence Hall: The Cradle of American Democracy

Why is it significant?

Stand here on the brick plaza facing the stately Georgian facade of Independence Hall and gaze up at its white wooden bell tower. You are standing before the crucible of modern democracy.

Key Facts

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Stand here on the brick plaza facing the stately Georgian facade of Independence Hall and gaze up at its white wooden bell tower. You are standing before the crucible of modern democracy. Inside the Assembly Room of this building, then the Pennsylvania State House, delegates from thirteen rebel colonies gathered in the stifling heat of July seventeen seventy-six to break away from the British Empire. Look at the high arched windows: in June and July of seventeen seventy-six, delegates kept the windows shut tight to prevent British loyalist spies outside on Chestnut Street from eavesdropping on their treasonous debates, enduring suffocating summer heat and clouds of horseflies while hammering out Thomas Jefferson's text. Eleven years later, in seventeen eighty-seven, the same hall witnessed the contentious Constitutional Convention. In the center stood George Washington's high-backed mahogany chair, carved with a half-sun motif on its crest. When the Constitution was finally signed, Benjamin Franklin remarked that he had wondered all summer whether that sun was rising or setting, but now knew it was a rising sun. Walk north across the grassy mall to the glass pavilion housing the Liberty Bell.