Pennsylvania Convention Center
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The Pennsylvania Convention Center is a multi-use public facility in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which is designed to accommodate conventions, exhibitions, conferences and other events. It is comprised of four main halls, smaller meeting rooms and auditoriums, and the grand hall, which is the former Reading Railroad terminal elevated train shed. The headhouse entrance to the Convention Center is located at 12th and Market Streets in Center City. The A, B, and C exhibit halls extend across 12th Street one story up (the 200 level) from the street level (100 level) , between 11th and 13th Streets and Arch and Race Streets. At the south side of the A exhibit hall a walkway extend over Arch Street, south into the grand hall. The opposite end of the grand hall provides a gated entrance into the headhouse lobby for the Marriott Hotel that occupies the old office spaces of Reading Railroad. Access to an adjoining Marriott Hotel is gained from this lobby by means of another second-story walkway over 12th Street.
The headhouse was a passenger station and the company headquarters for the Reading Railroad. The single-span arched train shed roof structure is touted as the world's oldest surviving. The headhouse was designed by architect F. H. Kimbal of the Wilson Brothers Architecture & Engineering firm in 1891. It opened in 1893 and served to enhance the railroad company's power and prominence, and contributed to the city's importance. The train tracks were raised into a great arched shed elevated above the Reading Terminal Market, which had prior rights to the railroad's right-of-way for the property use. When Reading Company ceased to exist as a railroad owner and operator, it sold the headhouse and train shed to SEPTA, the regional rail service. SEPTA operated its regional trains out of the shed until 1985, when they developed an underground station that bypassed the terminal, and the facility fell into disuse.
City and state officials pondered on a means to reuse the facility, and formed a convention center authority. Public reaction to redevelopment prompted the new authority to preserve the market and the train shed in its design of the new convention center. It currently oversees the operation and maintenance of the convention center.
