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Originally Posted by LINative
Yup you are right, even the Town Hall here in Babylon is bigger. Still not bad for a building finished about 200 years ago. Obvisously the city does not fit all its workers in the building, lol. Alot of them are in the Civic Center --- especially the Municipal Building. The City Hall pretty much houses Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his staff. He sits behind the desk George Washington used when he was President of the United States!
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When New York's City Hall was built ~1815, its north facade was made out of a cheaper stone than its other three faces because the city fathers couldn't imagine the city would expand further north of its location on Park Row. (It got refaced when the city did do just that.)
The Municipal Building, which IIRC lies to City Hall's north, was a notorious example of Tammany Hall graft.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Broadstreetexpresstrain
Philadelphia’s city hall was the tallest building in the world for a while, I think until one of my favorite skyscrapers, The Singer building was built in New York City. The Philly city hall is still one of the largest municipal buildings in the world and is still the tallest masonry building in the world. The pictures provided do not give a good impression of its height 549 feet - fifty stories. It was the tallest in the city for years until in 1986 when the gentlemen’s agreement was abolished whereby no buildings taller than it would be allowed. It has an observation deck at the top just below the William Penn statue. Below the building in the subway underground, there are 3 train stations (Broad Street Line - City Hall station / Market Street Line - 15th street station/ Subway Surface Line- 15th street station)
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The tower was supposed to be the tallest structure in the world when work began on the "Public Buildings of the City of Philadelphia" in 1871, but by the time the building was finished 30 years later, both the Washington Monument (by six feet, counting the statue of William Penn atop City Hall) and the Eiffel Tower (by 514 feet) had eclipsed it. It is, however, still either the second- or third-tallest masonry tower in the world, and it's also the largest municipal building in the country and one of the largest in the world.
Philadelphia City Hall also served as a symbol of corruption during its construction, thanks to the city's notorious Republican political machine; I believe that the cost to build it ($24 million in 1901) works out to something like $2.2 billion today, which makes it the most expensive city hall ever built in the country. But the reason it took 30 years to complete is because the state commission created to build it kept doling out the money to the city in insufficient amounts to ensure swift progress.
The American Institute of Architects celebrated its 150th anniversary by asking a panel of architects to nominate architecturally significant buildings; 248 of them were then voted on in a public poll to determine which were the most popular buildings in the country. Philadelphia City Hall came in 21st on the AIA's list of
"America's Favorite Architecture"; it's the highest-rated municipal building on the list; among government buildings overall, three outrank it: the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the U.S. Supreme Court.*
And the city considered tearing it down on two separate occasions. Noted local architect Paul Philippe Cret proposed removing everything but the tower (and refacing the tower in Art Deco cladding) in 1929, but that idea went nowhere. What saved the building from that fate in 1950, when the city did seriously consider replacing it, was that it would cost too much to demolish it — the city council determined that the cost of demolition would bankrupt the city.
BTW,
Broadstreetexpresstrain, being a railfan like me, might be interested to know that the Broad Street Line's City Hall station is located directly beneath the building's southwest corner. (The tunnel doglegs to avoid the City Hall Tower foundation.) It has thick columns and dividing walls (and is thus cramped) because it has to support the weight of all that stone and brick above it. In order to remodel it for handicapped accessibility, it will have to be closed for about two years so that the necessary support structures can be installed.
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Originally Posted by MrDee12345
Boston has left the conversation...  |
I'm strange: I am one of five people in the country who actually like New Boston City Hall.
If "form follows function," then this particularly brutal piece of Brutalist architecture telegraphs what's going on inside. The big eyebrow over the maw in which you find the building entrance houses the mayor. The row of large windows to this one's left contain the offices of the city council members, and the inverted pyramid on the top contains the city bureaucracy. (Interesting, isn't it, that the bureaucracy reigns supreme above all?)
Some other comments:
• I wonder whether Paul Philippe Cret didn't design Nashville's city hall. It bears passing resemblance to his Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (1931-35), now owned by Thomas Jefferson University:
Old Federal Reserve Bank Building
Beyond My Ken,
CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• I note that both modernist and Depression-era city halls don't get much love here either. Frankly, the modernist city hall in Twin Falls, Idaho, while attractive, leads me to conclude that one reason why is because the modern city halls lack the monumentality of the older ones. But about the only city hall in this group that gets more than one mention so far has been Los Angeles' pyramid-topped skyscraper, which was actually built just before the Depression. So I'm going to give a second vote to Kansas City's Depression-era skyscraper City Hall (1935-37), one of the tallest city halls in the country at 496 feet (520 feet to the top of the spire atop it). Its free 30th-floor observation deck still offers great views of the city.
*San Francisco's City Hall is the second-highest-rated city hall on the list, it comes in at No. 49, one spot above Jefferson's Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. One other government building comes in between the two: the Allegheny County Court House (#35) in Pittsburgh.
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