All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #085 for April 2026

Philadelphia's City Hall doubles as an art gallery and sculpture garden. More than 250 of Alexander Milne Calder's statues grace the massive walls of the building. But at ground level on the plaza outside the building there are seven more statues, two of them equestrian. 

Matthias William Baldwin was a precision jeweler turned locomotive manufacturer who gave away most of his wealth. His factory manufactured 75,000 railroad engines before it closed down.

John McArthur, Jr., was a Scottish architect who specialized in massive buildings. City Hall in its time was the largest building in the Western Hemisphere. 

William Bullitt was a transplanted southern lawyer who believed in both slavery and secession, yet he was chosen to rewrite the city's constitution in the 1870s. 

Samuel Perkins was the Director of the Public Buildings who ruled over the proceedings with an iron fist and was rewarded with a private joke in the south entry portico.