page_title: Houston City Hall
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Houston City Hall / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The City Hall and Market House, located on Travis Street at Prairie Avenue, was shared by the Houston city government and the city market. The building was designed by George E. Dickey in 1904. The image also shows pedestrians and numerous horse-drawn wagons.
context_page_description: The Houston City Hall building is the headquarters of the City of Houston's municipal government. Constructed during 1938 and 1939, the City Hall complex is located on Bagby Street on the western side of Downtown Houston. It is surrounded by the Houston Skyline District and is similar in design to dozens of other city halls built in the southwest United States during the same time period. City Hall is flanked by Tranquility Park and the Houston Public Library. The simply designed structure featured many construction details that have helped to make this building an architectural classic.
context_section_description: From 1841 to 1939, Houston's municipal government was headquartered at Old Market Square. It was destroyed by fire in the 1870s, and also in 1901, and rebuilt each time. In those days, City Hall was part of the lively commercial atmosphere of the Square. However, by the 1920s, the city leaders decided the site was no longer appropriate for their needs.
  In 1929, the city's planning commission urged the establishment of a civic center around a downtown park, Herman Square. However, the Great Depression sidetracked the plans for the new center. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted the Works Progress Administration program, the city applied for a WPA grant to help finance the construction of a new City Hall. The grant was approved, and construction began in March 1938, continuing for 20 months.
  Joseph Finger had designed the city hall building in a stripped classical style. He wanted to place on the front terrace statues of John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen, but the City of Houston lacked the funds needed to add the statues. The statues would have cost $8,000 and the city was still suffering from the Great Depression. The Texas Star Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) discovered this fact from reading a November 1939 article of the Scripps Howard Houston Press and publicized it in 2010. The statue project was dropped by the DRT chapter and the Oran M. Roberts Chapter 440, UDC, stepped in and raised the funds to have the Allen Brothers statues commissioned and cast in bronze.
  On July 15, 2008, world-renowned surgeon Dr. Michael E. Debakey lay in repose in Houston City Hall after he died the previous Friday due to natural causes, the first such honor for any deceased resident of the city.
caption: The City Hall and Market House, located on Travis Street at Prairie Avenue, was shared by the Houston city government and the city market.(1904)
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