Des Moines, Iowa

In the first decades of the 20th century American governments were gripped by the City Beautiful Movement that emphasized monumental civic buildings wrapped in classical Greek and Roman influences. Des Moines got its government temple on New Year’s Day 1912, from the pens of Willis Thomas Proudfoot and George Washington Bird, the town’s most influential architects of the early 1900s. In preparation for the arrival of the new City Hall a new bridge was opened across the Des Moines River at Locust Street in 1909 and the streets were raised four feet to minimize flooding. The bricks on the symmetrical, well-proportioned structure are sheathed in granite down low and with Bedford limestone quarried in Indiana above. 

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Allentown, Pennsylvania

In need of a new building for city offices, the five-story City Hall, the three story Public Safety building, and a three level parking deck were built in 1964 as part of the Allentown Redevelopment civic center plan after clearing the area between 4th and 5th Streets of blighted and deteriorated buildings. 

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New Bern, North Carolina

With a nod to its mother city, Bern, Switzerland the town’s city hall is dominated by an imposing clock tower. This yellow brick and terra-cotta Romanesque structure was built in 1897 by the federal government as a post office. As part of the deal for a new 1930s facility it became the New Bern City Hall. A mechanical Seth Thomas Clock operated in the tower from 1911 until 1999 when it was replaced by an electronic system. Look up over the arched corner entrances to see black bears, the symbol of the city - and of Bern, Switzerland as well.  

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Woodbury, New Jersey

This 2-1/2 story Colonial Revival brick building has evolved piecemeal through the decades. The east lower half, now City Hall, was originally the first permanent school of the Woodbury Friends, built in 1774. The second story was added in 1820 and the seamless addition of a library didn’t come along until 1953. 

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Chattanooga, Tennessee

Reuben Harrison Hunt designed this four-story Municipal Building in 1908 with a “U-shape” which helped bring ventilation to the offices. The city spent $30,000 for the land and another $156,750 for the building that housed every department of city government, including a jail. The Neoclassical gem received a complete facelift in 2006 that restored many of Hunt’s interior details to the building although the original form of the building has been altered during renovations that brought such modern amenities as air conditioning in 1968.  

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Washington, Pennsylvania

The current City Hall began life as a Neoclassical post office; you can still see the drive-in on the east side of the building where pick-ups were made.  

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Asheville, North Carolina

The Asheville City Building is a colorful, massive and eclectic Art Deco masterpiece. Douglas D. Ellington, an architect who came to Asheville in the mid-1920s, designed the eight-story building, which was completed in 1928. Ellington stated that the design was “an evolution of the desire that the contours of the building should reflect the mountain background.”

Ellington chose building materials that presented a “transition in color paralleling the natural clay-pink shades of the local Asheville soil.” The unusual octagonal roof is covered with bands of elongated triangular terra cotta red tiles. Between the two levels of the roof are angular pink Georgia marble piers between which are precise vertical rows of ornamental green and gold feather motifs.

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Little Rock, Arkansas

Illinois-born Charles L. Thompson was one of the busiest and most versatile architects in Arkansas, beginning his career in the Victorian age in 1891 and finishing in the Art Deco era of 1938. For the town’s new City Hall in 1906 Thompson tapped the Renaissance Revival style, crafted around a richly decorated central rotunda. When the civic building was dedicated on April 15, 1908 the Arkansas Gazette gushed that it was “one of the greatest events of its kind in the history of Little Rock.”

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Lansing, Michigan

This 9-story International Style government home came on board in 1959 from the pen of Kenneth C. Black. The dark green aluminum panel curtain wall is set inside a frame of limestone on a base of granite columns. The complex, that includes a hard-scaped plaza, was the centerpiece of a push in Lansing to modernize its buildings in the 1950s. One of the most prominent victims was the previous city hall, a monumental Richardsonian Romanesque government temple from 1896. 

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Aiken, South Carolina

Designed by architect Willis Irvin and built in 1938, the Municipal Building was extensively remodeled in 1987. This site has been occupied by several public buildings, including a brick police station and jail and an opera house where Will Rogers gave a benefit performance.

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Rome, New York

Rome didn’t have a real City Hall until the cornerstone was laid for this splendid Dutch-inspired building on October 14, 1894. Two stories of brick rise above a rusticated stone first story. The square building is topped by a tile-covered hipped roof crowned by a domed cupola. The City Hall is trimmed in stone and decorated with fluted pilasters. The government moved out in the 1970s and the building is now occupied by public agencies.

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New Orleans, Louisiana

The current New Orleans City Hall opened in 1958. It replaced Gallier Hall, an impressive Greek Revival building that was the inspiration of James Gallier Sr. Erected between 1845 and 1853 on the west side of Lafayette Square, it served as City Hall for just over a century.

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Boise, Idaho

Boise’s grandest City Hall was constructed in 1893 with soaring towers and imposing arches. The government outgrew that brick building and it was torn down in the 1950s while City Hall hunkered down for a generation in the Givens Pursley Building. This dark brick modern home came along in the 1970s.

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Seaford, Delaware

The City broke ground for a new government office building in 2002, capping a $1.5 million face-lift for the High Street area that included new sidewalks, ornamental lighting and shade trees.

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Annapolis, Maryland

This two-story brick building occupies the site of the Assembly Rooms, built in 1765 for social 

gatherings, which included card games and balls. The building burned during the Civil War, while 

it was being used as the provost marshal’s headquarters. In the 1870s the city government moved 

from over on Main Street and occupied the structure, which incorporates portions of three original 

walls left standing after the fire. Inside, three murals depict early events in the city’s history. 

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Denver, Colorado

This is the building you get when 39 architects put their heads together. The grand capstone of Denver’s Civic Center was finally completed in 1932 after 26 years in the making. The Beaux Arts tour de force is composed with curved wings around a Corinthian portico carved from 26-ton blocks of granite from Stone Mountain, Georgia. The bronze entrance doors are among the largest ever cast and open into a lobby festooned with panels of Colorado travertine. Surmounting the confection is a slender carillon clock tower supporting a golden eagle; the chimes ring every fifteen minutes.

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Tucson, Arizona

The city government moved into this modern Brutalist style, 10-story home in 1967. The price tag was $1.9 million. 

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Norwich, Connecticut

In the nearly 140 years since City Hall opened the exuberant Second Empire building is largely unaltered. Local architect Evan Burdick provided the dramatic design with red bricks on a cut granite base; he was also the designer of the Broadway Congregational Church, the Wauregan Hotel and several other town structures. The final price tag for City Hall, completed after three years of construction in 1873, was $250,000. The four-sided clock tower was added in 1909. In the basement are dreary dungeon-like cells, harkening back to the days when the police department was located there.

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El Paso, Texas

Catch it soon - the 10-story city hall in El Paso will be demolished in 32 days to make way for a new $50 million minor league baseball park.

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Tacoma, Washington

Only twenty-some years after its founding Tacoma boasted this magnificent Italian Renaissance brick and terra cotta edifice. Architect E.A. Heatherton sailed up from San Francisco in 1892 to construct the building for the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce. Once underway it was quickly adapted for government use and the two groups swapped properties. Heatherton outfitted the composition with eight-foot thick walls at the base and a bracketed campanile tower under a copper tiled roof. The clock and chimes came courtesy of Hugh C. Wallace, a future ambassador to France, in 1904 as a memorial to his daughter. The government stayed until 1959 and after dodging the wrecking ball during ten years of vacancy the old city hall was reborn as space for offices, shops, and restaurants.

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Kansas City, Missouri

At 29 stories and 445 feet tall this is the world’s fourth tallest city hall. This and other big-time construction projects in Kansas City were championed during the Depression of the 1930s by Democratic political boss Thomas Joseph Pendergast who, coincidentally, owned a concrete company. City Hall would require 20,000 cubic feet of Pendergast concrete. Inside were marbles from France, Italy and Vermont in shades of red and green and white. Look up before the building steps back to see a frieze with panels depicting critical events in the city’s history. Sculptures decorating the exterior were executed by German-American sculptors C. Paul Jennewein, Ulric Ellerhusen and Walter Hancock, a Medal of Freedom recipient who supervised the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia.

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Concord, New Hampshire

Cost considerations are why Concord City Hall is an island of brick amidst a sea of native granite. After deciding to move out of its digs in the Merrimack County Courthouse, a resolution was passed on January 11, 1902 authorizing $150,000 for the lot, new building and furnishings. Sixteen sites were considered before this property was acquired for $23,500. Plans favoring a Colonial flavor by architects Warren, Smith & Biscoe of Boston were selected and the rusticated brickwork was laid on a base of Concord granite. Native stone is much in evidence on building’s trim trim, especially the quoins around the windows. Behind City Hall is a two-story, L-shaped brick structure erected in 1908 on plans by William M. Butterfield to serve as the State Armory. After the state gave the building to the city n 1960 it served as a community center.

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Honolulu, Hawaii

This has been the home of the Honolulu municipal government since 1929. Most of the town’s leading architects contributed bits and pieces to its creation, although its major design influence was the Palace of the People, a one-time barracks and prison in Florence, Italy that was constructed around an interior courtyard. The three-story wings are a 1950s addition. The large bell inside the front door hails from the warship U.S.S. Honolulu, a light cruiser which was commissioned in 1938. The Honolulu, the second ship named for the city (a submarine has since followed) received eight battles for its service in World War II. 

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Montpelier, Vermont

The Montpelier government first assembled in a converted church on State Street called Capital Hall in 1857. The end of the 19th century found various buildings doing duty as “city hall.” In 1907 voters authorized $125,000 for the construction of a proper city hall and architect George G. Adams of Lawrence, Massachusetts won the commission. His Italian Renaissance composition is highlighted by a central clock tower and was executed in yellow brick with granite accents. The final tab was $170,000 and dedication took place on May 26, 1911. 

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Baltimore, Maryland

Situated on a city block bounded by Lexington Street on the North, Guilford Avenue on the

West, Fayette Street on the South and War Memorial Plaza to the East, the six-story structure was

designed by precocious 22-year old architect George A. Frederick in the Second Empire style with

prominent Mansard roofs and richly-framed dormers. Two floors of a repeating Serlian window

motif lord over an urbanely rusticated basement. Dedicated on October 25, 1875, it is an early

example of French Renaissance Revival construction in America. In 1975, City Hall was completely

restored to its former glory including the dome and formal hearing rooms.

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Scranton, Pennsylvania

When Lackawanna County was formed in 1878, the city block that now houses the Lackawanna County Courthouse was known as “Lily Pond” or Tamarack Bog.” The property was a dump for ashes and cinders and was used for skating in the winter. In 1879, the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company and the Susquehanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad and Coal Company donate the land as site for public buildings and a park.

Isaac Perry of Binghamton, New York was awarded the commission for the new county courthouse. Perry’s design called for a Victorian Chateau-style built in the warm tones of the city’s native west mountain stone, trimmed in Onondaga limestone. Construction was complete in 1884. In 1896, local architect B. Taylor Lacey designed the building’s third floor, adding eclectic stylistic influences such as a steeply pitched hipped tile roof, wall dormers with scrolled Flemish parapets topped by broken pediments and urns, a dentillated cornice and pyramidal-roofed towers.

The Lackawanna County Courthouse gained national attention in 1902 for its role as the meeting site for the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission’s sessions in Scranton. The Commission - appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt - met in the Superior Courtroom to hear testimony in America’s first non-violent federal intervention between labor and ownership. John Mitchell spoke on behalf of the mine workers and famed attorney Clarence Darrow represented management.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Courthouse received a re-design of the clock tower in 1929 and a two-story rectangular wing in 1964.

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Frederick, Maryland

This Victorian style building, constructed in 1862, has been described as “one of the prettiest courthouse squares in America.” In 1765, Frederick citizens assembled in the courtyard and burned effigies of government officials in demonstration of the Stamp Act. This is considered to be the first public uprising against the monarchist rule, occurring several years before the Boston tea party. Busts of Maryland’s first governor Thomas Johnson and Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney are displayed in the courtyard.

This building replaced the original courthouse on the site that burned on May 8, 1861, with the bell in the cupola eerily tolling its own death knell as the roof began to collapse. Brick and iron fortify the present structure, a model of fireproof construction when it was completed in 1862. In 1986 the city government moved into the old courthouse.

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Bristol, Rhode Island

It is probably safe to assume no one born in Indiana ever had as much impact on Rhode Island as Ambrose Burnside. command of Fort Adams in Newport brought Burnside to the Ocean State in 1852 where he found a wife and a permanent reputation as the inventor of a famous rifle that bore his name - the Burnside carbine. That reputation propelled a Civil War career that led Abraham Lincoln to offer him command of the Union Army. Major General Burnside turned him down believing, correctly, that he lacked the appropriate experience.

After the war ended Burnside was immediately elected to three one-year terms as Governor of Rhode Island and then mixed a successful business career with his political ambitions. At its inception in 1871, the National Rifle Association chose him as its first president. In 1874 he was elected to the United States Senate and was serving a second term when he died of a heart attack in Bristol in 1881 at the age of 57.

The erection of this memorial, now serving use as a town building, was quite a big deal in 1883 when it was planned. A crowd of some 5,000 overwhelmed the streets of Bristol to hear President Chester A. Arthur speak at the laying of the cornerstone. The building itself was designed by Stephen C. Earle of Worcester, Massachusetts and displays many of the hallmarks of the Richardsonian Romanesque style including prominent arches, multi-chromatic materials and pillar groups. Long completely clad in ivy, an award-winning restoration revealed the design details and red mortar between the stones. To the side and rear is the Bristol War Veterans Honor Roll Garden.

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Johnstown, Pennsylvania

Joseph Johns set aside space on all four corners of this intersection for “parklets.” Three remain and only the corner containing City Hall is occupied. Constructed in 1900 to replace an earlier building on this site, the new City Hall held special significance for the community. Here one of the flood’s most beneficial changes to the town took place - the consolidation of many of the valley’s small boroughs into the City of Johnstown. Before the flood, each borough guarded its governing rights but rebuilding together made more sense and so consolidation was voted in on November 6, 1889.

The city fathers wanted to be sure that the new City Hall, constructed in 1900 to replace an earlier municipal building on the site, symbolized what they believed was the modern, progressive nature of Johnstown. To that end, Charles Robinson of Altoona designed a Richardsonian Romanesque structure, which at the time was the style of choice in America for monumental civic buildings. Walter Myton served as project architect; he designed at least forty residences in the area, along with as many churches, schools and stores.

A square wooden cupola, rising out of the western end of the roof, contains miniature features found in the larger building, such as false arches with voussoirs and small arched balconies.  It also has clock faces on all four sides. Note also the markers on the wall of City Hall, showing high water lines during Johnstown’s three worst floods. Flood control measures were taken after the 1936 disaster, yet in 1977, a “once in 500 years” storm caused a flood resulting in 85 deaths and $200 million in damage.

For decades, one of the residents of the parklets around Market and Main streets was Morley’s dog, a statue ]made in the late 1800s by J.W. Fiske Iron Works, a New York City-based maker and retailer of ornamental iron and zinc products. Cambria Iron executive James Morley bought the statue and placed it in his lawn at Main and Walnut, where it stood until being washed away by the floodwaters in the great flood of May 31, 1889. Recovered in the debris pile at the stone bridge, it was returned to Morley. The Morley family kept the statue at various residences throughout the city, including a house on Palliser Street in Southmont. In the 1940s, the statue was donated to the city, and became a beloved icon. It has since been removed in anticipation of needed restoration.

Over time people came to believe that Morley was a dog that saved a child during the great flood. There was such a dog, a Newfoundland named Romey who saved three people, but Morley’s Dog has nothing to do with that incident. This misconception was spread further by a reference in the 1977 Paul Newman movie Slap Shot.

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Albany, New York

Henry Hobson Richardson, America’s most influential architect of the late 1800s, went straight into his playbook for this municipal building in 1881 that replaced the previous city hall, designed by Philip Hooker in 1829, that had burned down. Richardson’s City Hall features many of his trademark Romanesque design elements: contrasting light and dark rough-cut stone; multiple arches, often in sets of three; groups of truncated pillars, decorative gables and a tower. In an 1885 listing of the Ten Most Beautiful Building in America by American Architect magazine, the Albany City Hall was on the honor roll. In 1927 the pyramidal-roofed tower was outfitted with the first municipal carillon in the United States, equipped with 60 bells. The largest weighs 11,200 pounds.

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Springfield, Massachusetts

On the afternoon of  January 6, 1905 fire was discovered in the large brick City Hall that had served Springfield since 1856. Five minutes later flamed burst from all parts of the building. In twenty minutes the roof fell in and in an hour nothing was standing except the walls and tower. According to reports, the fire was set by a pet monkey escaping from its cage and overturning a kerosene lamp in pursuit of food from an exhibition in progress in the hall. The people in the building all escaped but the monkey lost its life in the conflagration. Also lost were all the assessors’ records in the city; the monetary loss of $100,000 was uninsured.

Ambitious plans were laid for the city’s second city hall. The grand municipal complex was to consist of two temple-like Greek Revival buildings flanking a 300-foot high Italianate Campanile clocktower. Completed in 1913, former President William Howard Taft officiated the opening ceremonies. Due to a height restriction in Springfield, the Campanile, with a carillon of twelve bells, remained the tallest structure in the city until 1973.

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