Imagine yourself waiting for the corner of Chestnut St. and 17th St, down the middle of Philadelphia’s business and shopping district.
Look up, necessities such as Liberty Place towers, One Liberty Place to the left along with the slightly shorter Two Liberty Place to the best. Liberty is an effective name in this particular town, the Cradle of Liberty, as the saying goes, home with the Liberty Bell, nevertheless it comes to are more of a snide comment should you ask “Liberty from what?”
In it, it’s liberty on the Gentlemen’s Agreement that limited the height of buildings in Philadelphia for merely a century. I guess because individuals in Philadelphia were miffed that City Hall never took over as tallest building on the planet, it became an unwritten rule that no building in Philadelphia will be built taller compared to the top of Billy Penn’s hat. And this was how things were until 1987, when One Liberty Place went up nearly two times as tall as City Hall. When the Gentlemen’s Agreement was mentioned, the developer supposedly replied, “Ah, but I’m not a gentleman”.
People were up in arms to begin with, but they are honestly great buildings and also add to the Philadelphia skyline, so everyone’s grown to understand them, with one glaring exception. William Penn, people imagined, wasn’t pleased at being dethroned from his place at the surface of Philadelphia. How very un-Quaker of him. And the best way people said he showed his displeasure was intervening within the city sports franchises.
You see, within the decade before the opening of Liberty Place, all in the major Philadelphia sports teams, the Phillies, the Eagles, the Flyers, and also the 76ers, had won a championship into their league. Liberty Place comes up, and they also all start losing. And they keep losing for 19 years. Conclusion: Billy Penn mad.
Now, some on the more mathematically inclined among you could possibly say that considering the number of teams to all of these leagues, it is just not so unreasonable for virtually any four not to ever win a championship in 2 decades. Yeah, well shut up. The curse was real enough with the fans. It got so bad that there became a horse from your suburbs, Smarty Jones, who has been looking very likely to win horse racing’s triple crown about several years ago, and people who never watched a horse race within their life were seriously hoping which he would break the curse. He didn’t, he were only available in second on the Belmont Stakes, a great deal more of people never watched a horse race again.