page_title: Boston City Hall
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Boston City Hall / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Boston City Hall Creator: Boston Redevelopment Authority Date: circa 1968 Source: Government Center Urban Renewal project, Boston Redevelopment Authority photographs, Collection # 4010.001 File name: R35_0059 Rights: Copyright City of Boston Citation: Boston Redevelopment Authority photographs, Collection # 4010.001, City of Boston Archives, Boston
context_page_description: Boston City Hall is the seat of city government of Boston, Massachusetts. It includes the offices of the mayor of Boston and the Boston City Council. The current hall was built in 1968 to assume the functions of the Old City Hall.
  It is a controversial and prominent example of Brutalist architecture, part of the modernist movement. It was designed by Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles with Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty and LeMessurier Consultants.
  Together with the surrounding plaza, City Hall is part of the Government Center complex. This project constituted a major urban redesign effort in the 1960s, as Boston demolished an area of substandard housing and businesses.
  The building has been subject to nearly universal public condemnation, and is often called one of the world's ugliest buildings. Calls for the structure to be demolished have been regularly made even before construction was finished. Architects and critics considered it to be excellent work, with one poll finding that professional architects describe Boston City Hall as one of the ten proudest achievements of American architecture.
context_section_description: Boston City Hall was designed by Gerhard Kallmann, a Columbia University professor, and Michael McKinnell, a Columbia graduate student, (who co-founded Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles). In 1962 they won an international, two-stage design competition for the building. Their design, selected from 256 entries by a jury of prominent architects and businessmen, departed from the more conventional designs of most of the other entries (typified by pure geometrical forms clad with sleek curtain walls) to introduce an articulated structure that expressed the internal functions of the buildings in rugged, cantilevered concrete forms. While hovering over the broad brick plaza, the City Hall was designed to create an open and accessible place for the city's government, with the most heavily used public activities all located on the lower levels directly connected to the plaza. The major civic spaces, including the Council chamber, library, and Mayor's office, were one level up, and the administrative offices were housed above these, behind the repetitive brackets of the top floors.
  At a time when monumentality was typically considered an appropriate attribute for governmental architecture, the architects sought to create a bold statement of modern civic democracy, placed within the historic city of Boston. While the architects looked to precedents by Le Corbusier, especially the monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, with its cantilevered upper floors, exposed concrete structure, and a similar interpretation of public and private spaces, they also drew from the example of Medieval and Renaissance Italian town halls and public spaces, as well as from the bold granite structures of 19th-century Boston (including Alexander Parris' Quincy Market immediately to the east).
  Many of the elements in the design have been seen as abstractions of classical design elements, such as the coffers and the architrave above the concrete columns. Kallmann, McKinnell, and Knowles collaborated with two other Boston architectural firms and one engineering firm to form the "Architects and Engineers for the Boston City Hall" as the entity responsible for construction, which took place from 1963 to 1968.
  The architects designed City Hall as divided into three sections, aesthetically and also by use. The lowest portion of the building, the brick-faced base, which is partially built into a hillside, consists of four levels of the departments of city government, where the public has wide access. The brick largely transfers over to the exterior of this section, and it is joined by materials such as quarry tile inside. The use of these terra cotta products relates to the building's location on one of the original slopes of Boston, expressed in the open, brick-paved plaza, and also to historic Boston's brick architecture, seen in the adjoining Sears Crescent block and the Blackstone Block buildings across Congress Street.
  The intermediate portion of City Hall houses the public elected officials: the Mayor, the City Council members, and the Council Chamber. The large scale and the protrusion of these interior spaces on the outside, instead of being buried deep within the building, reveal the important public functions to the passers-by and are intended to create a visual and symbolic connection between the city and its government.  The effect is of a small city of concrete-sheltered structures cantilevered above the plaza: large forms that house important civic activities. The cantilevers are supported by exterior columns, spaced alternately at 14-foot-4-inch (4.37 m) and 28-foot-8-inch (8.74 m), which are steel-reinforced.
  The upper stories contain the city's office space, which are used by civil servants not visited frequently by the public, such as the administrative and planning departments. The bureaucratic nature is reflected in the standardized window patterns, separated by pre-cast concrete fins, with an open office plan typical of modern office buildings. (The subsequent enclosure of much of this space into separate offices contributed to the ventilation p
caption: Boston City Hall, circa 1968
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