Curse of Billy Penn and the Comcast Center statuette

A long-standing informal agreement kept new buildings in Philadelphia lower than the William Penn statue atop City Hall; that practice ended when One Liberty Place was completed in 1987. Local folklore held that skyscrapers taller than City Hall coincided with a championship drought for Philadelphia sports teams and was popularly called the 'Curse of Billy Penn.' In 2007 ironworkers placed a small William Penn statuette on the topping-off beam of the Comcast Center, and the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series the following year; the curse is regarded as local folklore and its causal link is debated.