page_title: Boston City Hall
section_title: Negative
hierarchical_section_title: Boston City Hall / Reception / Negative
caption_attribution_description: Boston City Hall, Boston, Massachusetts
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: In the 1960s, Mayor John F. Collins reportedly gasped as the design was first unveiled, and someone in the room blurted out, "What the hell is that?" City Hall is very unpopular with some Bostonians, as it is with some employees of the building. In 2006 some described it as a dark and unfriendly eyesore. In part, such opinions are a reaction against greater Boston's numerous examples of concrete modernism from the 1960s. As City Hall is one of the few public buildings in the Brutalist style, it receives more attention. Secondly, those opinions are influenced by the city's inadequate funding for maintenance (compared to the Boston Public Library, for instance), its need for upgraded lighting and mechanical systems, and its lack of coherent signage. 
  The post-9/11 environment has dramatically changed what had been intended as a civil center and community space on the stairways and plaza around the building. Public access has been sharply reduced by the erection of security barriers and closing of numerous entrances. These changes have created a defensive effect and made the building isolated in its large space and more difficult for the public to use.
  In addition, the building's popularity declined as the tide turned away from modernism in New England to more traditional and post-modern styles in the 1970s and 1980s. The building was no longer new, architectural monumentality fell out of favor, and the idea of a "new" era and a "new" Boston became old-fashioned. The changes in style coincided with political changes, as Kevin White's mayoral administration ended. 
  Under subsequent administrations, which focused on neighborhoods rather than the center city, and decentralization instead of centralized civic power, funding was funneled away from City Hall. Compared to the well-maintained Boston Public Library, a place characterized by brightness, cleanliness, and warmth, City Hall's spaces are dispiriting. In that context, some users and occupants have found City Hall to be unpleasant and dysfunctional. It has been the butt of jokes in some local magazines. The structure's complex interior spaces and sometimes-confusing floor plan have not been mitigated by quality wayfinding, signage, graphics or lighting.
  Also, City Hall's large open spaces, central courtyard, and concrete structure make the building expensive to heat in an age of rising energy costs. But numerous public, institutional, and religious buildings throughout greater Boston feature similarly large, or larger, open spaces. As with other structures of its era, City Hall would benefit from a study of ways to "green" the building and reduce its energy requirements, while taking care to retain its dramatic design and key characteristics.
  A commentator wrote in 2006 that "I believe it's only a matter of time, and it will have to be totally removed, not modified, not retrofitted, not adapted." In 2008, the building was voted "World's Ugliest Building" in an online poll by the travel agency Virtualtourist. A number of news outlets picked up that moniker, and Mayor Tom Menino adopted it during his long tenure as a boon to tourism. A 2013 OPED essay by columnist Paul McMorrow in the Boston Globe described it as "the worst building in the city" and advocated demolition. Curbed Boston included City Hall on its 2018 list of Boston's "10 ugliest buildings." A 2016 Boston Globe essay about "Boston flops, flubs, and failures" said City Hall was "cracking internally like a dead molar waiting to be pulled.
caption: Boston City Hall interior, 1981
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