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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