Description
The Pennsylvania Convention Center comprises four main halls or rooms, smaller meeting rooms and auditoriums, and the grand hall, which is part of the former Reading Railroad terminal elevated train shed. (The rest of the train shed is occupied by meeting rooms and a hallway on one floor and the grand ballroom, which is on a new floor inserted into the 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 hotel, designed by BLT Architects with completion in 1995, is connected to the Market East Transportation Center via a skybridge to the historic Reading Terminal. The 1,200-room hotel also offers restaurants, a health/fitness center, and various-sized ballrooms and pre-function areas for meetings, convention activities, and other public and private events. In 1999 designs by BLT Architects to expand the Marriott Hotel at the Pennsylvania Convention Center were completed. The upper seven floors of the historic Reading Terminal Headhouse, designed by the Wilson Brothers in 1894, provided space to expand the Marriott’s conference capabilities with a 210 unit suites-type hotel featuring terraced restaurants and other public spaces. The grand ballroom occupies the Reading Railroad Company’s original waiting room.
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