He was probably most famous for sculpting the statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall which was the tallest in the city until Liberty Square was constructed 39 years ago.

Calder Gardens - 2025 - Calder Gardens, opened on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, is a museum dedicated to the work of sculptor Alexander Calder. The 18,000-square-foot museum is partially sunken into the landscape, creating an intimate setting that brings together art, architecture, and nature. Rather than a conventional museum, its galleries and gardens are designed as spaces for contemplation and discovery, with Calder’s work experienced alongside a diverse landscape of more than 250 plant species.

Calder Sidewalk - 2002 - The owners of three adjacent galleries, Robert Graham, Klaus Perls (who represented Calder), and Morton Rosenfeld, banded together and commissioned Calder to create this piece. The galleries split the construction cost and the Artist donated his design. In the late 60's and the early 70's, this neighborhood was the center of the Avant Garde Art world. This is the only terrazzo piece that Calder did.

Caldera Arts Center – Hearth Building - 2004 - The Caldera Arts Center – Hearth Building, designed by Allied Works Architecture, is a multi-use structure located in the Cascade Range on the shores of Blue Lake. The building was completed in 2004 and serves as the central hub for Caldera, a non-profit organization that brings innovative arts programming to under-served students and communities in Portland and Central Oregon.The Hearth Building is characterized by its crescent-shaped plan, organized as several interlocking wood platforms. The building gathers the central functions of Caldera under a cedar-shake roof anchored by two monumental concrete fireplaces. It houses a multi-purpose performance hall, library, and art studios, all of which open to sheltered space, light, ventilation, and views on all sides. The design of the Hearth Building echoes the form of the surrounding volcanic crater and the material and structure of the enclosing pine forest. This creates a resonant space for education, gathering, and artistic production.

The Eagle - 1971 - American sculptor Calder studied mechanical engineering before studying art. The Eagle reveals the artist’s distinctive combination of pragmatism and poetry. Architectural in its construction and scale, it displays its curving wings, assertive stance, and pointy beak in a form that is weightless, colorful, and abstract.

The Onion - 1965 - The Onion is a monumental sculpture in sheet metal, designed by Alexander Calder. It was gifted by Susan Morse Hilles to the collection of Harvard University, President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Washington Square Arch - 1889 - The Arch commemorates the centennial of George Washington's 1789 inauguration as President of the United States, and forms the southern terminus of Fifth Avenue. Washington Arch, constructed of white Tuckahoe marble, was conceived by Stanford White, who imitated a Roman triumphal arch, namely the Arch of Titus, iconic monuments which Roman emperors built throughout the empire to celebrate a victory or event. The iconography of the Arch centers on images of war and peace. On the frieze are 13 large stars and 42 small stars, interspersed with capital "W"s. The spandrels contain figures of Victory. MacNeil was the artist for Washington as commander in chief; Calder sculpted Washington as civilian.

La Grande Voile (The Big Sail) - 1965 - Calder is best known for his development of sculptures in motion, known as "mobiles." A second major mode in his work was the "stabile," a stable sculpture that rests on the ground. The sculptor Jean Arp, whose biomorphic vocabulary influenced Calder, coined the term stabile in order to contrast them to Calder's mobiles. Calder's first large stabiles date from the mid-1930s but it was not until the late 1950s and 1960s that they began to attain the colossal scale of MIT's La Grande Voile (The Big Sail). In such works, Calder wanted to achieve a massiveness of form and scale without sacrificing the lightness and sense of motion of his mobiles. The stabiles establish as few points of contact with the ground as possible. The subtle interplays between straight and sinuous edges and between flat and curved planes and the appendages jutting out from the framework communicate an epic quality and a soaring dynamism. The large stabiles provide changing experiences of space as the spectator moves around and through them. Sudden angles and planes slice, divide, and mold the space into varied shapes. Calder wrote: When I use two or more sheets of metal cut into shapes and mounted at angles to each other, I feel that there is a solid form, perhaps concave, perhaps convex, filling the dihedral angles between them. I do not have a definite idea of what this would be like, I merely sense it and occupy myself with the shapes one actually sees. Calder's forms are imaginatively derived from nature, and their presence is strongly organic. Such stabiles as La Grande Voile suggest primeval beings, giant insects or birds raised up on their legs and spreading their wings in an impressive array of spars, blades, bolts, and rivets. The spirit of play is powerful in everything that Calder made, as is his sense of joyful and ebullient invention. Calder's working method involved making a small model that was then mathematically enlarged and fabricated in large scale under his supervision at an

William Penn (Bronze Statue, Philadelphia) - 1894 - The bronze statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall is the defining work of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and one of the most iconic civic monuments in the United States. Installed in 1894, the figure stands 37 feet tall and weighs more than 50,000 pounds, making it the tallest statue atop any building in the world at the time. Cast in fourteen sections and assembled on the tower’s lantern, the sculpture crowns the 548‑foot structure and anchors the skyline with Penn’s calm, forward‑looking presence.Calder’s Penn is rendered in a dignified, naturalistic style: broad‑brimmed hat, greatcoat, and a scroll in his left hand symbolizing the Charter of Pennsylvania. The figure faces northeast toward the site of Penn’s treaty with the Lenape, a deliberate gesture linking the city’s civic center to its founding ideals. Together with the more than 250 sculptures Calder created for the building’s façades, the Penn statue forms the apex of City Hall’s vast allegorical program celebrating Philadelphia’s history, industry, and democratic aspirations.For nearly a century, the statue also shaped the city’s skyline through the informal “gentlemen’s agreement” that no building would rise higher than Penn’s hat—a tradition that lasted until the construction of One Liberty Place in 1987. Today, Calder’s William Penn remains one of Philadelphia’s most recognizable symbols and a masterpiece of 19th‑century civic sculpture.

First Ladies of Public Art - The First Ladies of Public Art is a series of four sculptures depicting four famous singers and actresses from the early 20th century in various roles: Marilyn Miller as Sunny, Ethyl Barrymore as Ophelia, Mary Pickford as Little Lord Fauntleroy, and Rosa Ponselle as Norma. It is located on the outside of the Israel Miller Building on 46th Street and Seventh Avenue.

George Washington / Wisdom and Justice - Carved in relief form on the Washington Square Arch, George Washington is depicted in a regal stance in front of human personifications of wisdom and justice. Standing figure (three/quarters round, over life-size) before two figures (over life-size) in high relief, on integral plinth, pedestal