When I was visiting Independence Hall Assembly Room, I noticed the Penn arms over the "rising sun" chair and asked if they were there at the signing of the Declaration and Constitution.  According to the tour guide who had been there for years, I was the first person to ask about the arms, and she had not noticed them before.  I received a reply from the curator that they probably were there, and also received this interesting story.

"This armorial object dates from 1912.  The National Park Service included it in the restoration based upon a 1764 documentary reference to members of the Assembly threatening to remove the Penn coat of arms from their chamber and replace them with the arms of the king.  The threat wasn’t carried out, and presumably the Penn coat of arms remained in the Assembly Room until 8 July 1776 when the king’s coat of arms hanging in the courtroom across the hall were removed and burned in the public square as part of the activities surrounding the announcement of the creation of the Declaration of Independence."

http://www.richardlabunski.com/Assembly room4 copy.jpg

Man Mike, ya know structural heraldry is ‘my thing’ so naturally I wish these were larger than they are to see. Did they appear that small while there in person?

Possibly preempting Mike, yes, they really are that small.  I had read about the Penn arms being carved above the Speaker’s chair, so when I took the kids to Independence Hall a year or so ago I made a point to look for them, and my reaction was "is that all there is?"

For what it’s worth, the royal arms across the hall in the courtroom were eventually replaced (in 1785) by an oil painting of the Pennsylvania state arms adopted in 1777.  A pretty good photo (except that the painting needs cleaning) can be seen at http://www.erikburd.org/pictures/philly/hall/12100012.jpg.

The Pennsylvania state arms are also carved into a stone mounted on the outside of the building.  Somewhere I have a digital photo that I’ll try to find among the megabytes of files.

Looking at a colonial state house farther south, the reconstructed Capitol at Williamsburg has several interesting bits of heraldry, particularly in the chamber of the House of Burgesses.  Above the entry door at the rear of the room is a carving of the Virginia coat of arms:

http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/fsa/8d17000/8d17200/8d17217r.jpg

A carving of the royal arms was attached to the pediment on the high back of the speaker’s chair at the front of the chamber, similar to the one above the chief justice’s chair in the General Court chamber:

http://home.earthlink.net/~jlmikkelson/images/williamsburg/royal_court.jpg

man those are awesome as well! thanks fellas… they’re great.

Joseph McMillan wrote:

The Pennsylvania state arms are also carved into a stone mounted on the outside of the building.  Somewhere I have a digital photo that I’ll try to find among the megabytes of files.

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