City Hall Visitor Center To Close

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- As of October 25, 2011, the City Hall Visitor Center, managed by the Independence Visitor Center Corporation (IVCC) will close indefinitely due to access limitations allowing entry to the space. The City Hall Visitor Center is located in the East Portal of City Hall.

The City Hall Visitor Center welcomes more than 100,000 visitors per year, one-third of which are international visitors.  The City Hall Visitor Center is the main hub for architectural tours of City Hall and to purchase tickets for the City Hall clock tower tour and observation deck. The site is also a retail location for Philadelphia souvenirs and provides visitor information for the entire city.  City Hall tours and retail operations will also be suspended during the closure.

The City Hall Visitor Center opened in June 2007, part of a collaboration between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the William Penn Foundation, City of Philadelphia Department of Public Property, Independence Visitor Center Corporation (IVCC) and the Center City District (CCD).

The Independence Visitor Center Corporation (IVCC) is a Pennsylvania non-profit, 501(c)3 organization which operates in cooperation with the efforts of the National Park Service, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The IVCC operates the Independence Visitor Center on Independence Mall at 6th & Market streets in conjunction with the National Park Service.  The IVCC also provides management of visitor services at the City Hall Visitor Center, Fairmount Park Welcome Center at 16th & JFK, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

The Independence Visitor Center is Independence National Historical Park's and the region's welcome center for people from all over the nation and the world offering visitor amenities including trip planning service, easy onsite ticketing for area attractions, multilingual concierge staff, comprehensive daily listing of area events, attraction displays and regional maps, free, informative historical and orientation films, free wireless Internet access and much more. Follow @PHLVisitorCntr, the Visitor Center's 24-hour virtual concierge service on Twitter, and like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/independencevisitorcenter.

SOURCE Independence Visitor Center