# Old Berkeley City Hall

Old Berkeley City Hall, also known as the Maudelle Shirek Building, is a historic building in the Civic Center neighborhood of Berkeley, California, U.S.. It was originally located at 2134 Grove Street (now 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way). It has is listed as one of the National Register of Historic Places under the name "City Hall" since September 11, 1981; and listed as a Berkeley Landmark by the city since December 15, 1975. It is one of the contributing buildings to the Berkeley Historic Civic Center District.

## History

The design of the Berkeley City Hall was derived from the Town Hall at Tours, France, designed by Victor Laloux. The building design by architects John Bakewell Jr., and Arthur Brown Jr. for the old city hall was selected as the winner of a 1907 competition to replace the original Town Hall which had burned to the ground in 1904 (designed by Samuel and Joseph Cather Newsom, 1884). The old city hall building has a grand marble entrance, a cupola, a spire and a curving staircase with wrought-iron banisters. A few years later in 1915, the same two architects designed San Francisco City Hall, which has similar features. The Old City Hall is also the keystone of the Berkeley Civic Center, which was inspired by the concepts of the "City Beautiful movement", emphasizing broad vistas and important public buildings grouped around a central open space or park.
In 1977, the city offices were moved to 2180 Milvia Street, which resulted in the name "old city hall". The fate of the old city hall building has been in limbo since 2002, when Berkeley voters rejected a bond to repair it. In 2007, the name of the building was changed to the Maudelle Shirek Building, after the former former Vice Mayor and eight-term City Council member Maudelle Shirek.

## Description

Berkeley City Hall, also referred to as Old City Hall since the relocation of city offices to 2180 Milvia Street in 1977, is a two-story Beaux-Arts building in the French Renaissance style. Constructed with steel-reinforced concrete and finished with stucco, it features an attic and a basement. The building's U-shaped structure includes a semi-circular stair-bay at the rear. Its symmetrical design is divided into a central section flanked by two smaller wings, projecting to the north and south.
The main facade, facing east, is particularly impressive. Set back about 30 feet from the street, it is surrounded by landscaped gardens featuring lawns, shrubs, trees, and curving flower beds. A broad central stairway leads to a balustraded terrace spanning the front of the central section.
The central portion of the building (86' by 66') comprises five bays. The ground floor features round arch openings with molded architraves, containing wood-framed sash windows with triple horizontal and vertical divisions. These windows have shallow balconies with classical balustrades. Above, the second-floor windows, now fitted with aluminum sash that retain the original divisions, also feature projecting balconies with balustrades. The central facade is adorned with six giant order-length ionic columns supporting a cornice with ornamental dentils and monumental urns. Behind the urns is a blank frieze ending in a secondary cornice molding with a central cartouche. The central portion is topped with a raised, hipped roof adorned with ornamental flames.
The highlight of the building is a 60-foot lantern and spire. The lantern rises from the roof, featuring a paneled base with a high metal balustrade around an open colonnade. This colonnade supports a classic entablature crowned by a narrow dome with engaged piers and finials, topped by a beveled spire.
The two identical wings of the building (each 31' by 77') are perpendicular to the central portion and share similar architectural details. The ground floors of these wings have round arch openings framed by cartouches with lion masques and supporting brackets. The second-floor balconies span three smaller rectangular windows and are faced with metal balustrades. Each wing has a hipped roof capped with ornamental flames.
The building's stucco is painted light brown, while the lantern, spire, and sash are dark brown. Since its completion in 1909, the building has undergone minimal alterations. The main facade's wooden sash windows were replaced with aluminum, preserving the original design. In 1950, the building's rear was extended to create additional office space, enclosing windows on either side of the stair-bay and darkening the main staircase.
Inside, the most notable feature is a broad U-shaped stairway leading to the second floor, with a wrought iron banister decorated with gold-colored medallions. The interior walls, ceiling, and columns create an illusion of more expensive materials through expert craftsmanship. What appears to be dressed stone walls and a tooled leather and brocade tapestry ceiling are actually plaster painted in red, olive, green, cream, and gilt to mimic these materials. The marble wainscoting in the main floor hallway is genuine, but the two columns at the stairway's base are scagliola, imitating marble. This original decorative work remains unaltered.