Boston City Hall during the 2004 rally for the New England Patriots.

Boston City Hall is the home of the municipal government of Boston, Massachusetts. Boston City Hall, Boston, Massachusetts Source: Library of Congress Collection: Historic American Buildings Survey Origin: National Park Service URL: http://memory. ... Boston City Hall, Boston, Massachusetts Source: Library of Congress Collection: Historic American Buildings Survey Origin: National Park Service URL: http://memory. ... City Foxborough, Massachusetts Other nicknames The Pats Team colors Nautical Blue, New Century Silver, Red, and White Head Coach Bill Belichick Owner Robert Kraft General manager Bill Belichick Mascot Pat Patriot League/Conference affiliations American Football League (1960–69) Eastern Division (1960–69) National Football League (1970–present) American Football... Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe)1 Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County Mayor Thomas M. Menino (D) Area    - City 232. ...

City Hall is a 9-level, horizontally-oriented brutalist building located at the heart of IM Pei’s brick-paved Government Center plaza in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It is rectangular in plan, but is an inverted pyramid in elevation. Unité dHabitation, Marseille (Le Corbusier 1952) Brutalism is an architectural style that spawned from the modernist architectural movement and which flourished from the 1950s to the 1970s. ... Ieoh Ming Pei (貝聿銘 pinyin Bèi Yùmíng) is a Chinese American architect born in Suzhou, China on April 26, 1917. ... Government Center is a city square and plaza in Boston, Massachusetts, bounded by Cambridge, Court, Congress, and Sudbury Streets. ...

City Hall is located in Government Center in downtown Boston. The adjoining 8-acre City Hall Plaza is often used for parades and rallies; most memorably, the region's championship sports teams, the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox, have been feted in front of City Hall. A huge crowd in the plaza also greeted Queen Elizabeth II during her 1976 Bicentennial visit, as she walked from the Old State House to City Hall to have lunch with the Mayor. Government Center is a city square and plaza in Boston, Massachusetts, bounded by Cambridge, Court, Congress, and Sudbury Streets. ... City Foxborough, Massachusetts Other nicknames The Pats Team colors Nautical Blue, New Century Silver, Red, and White Head Coach Bill Belichick Owner Robert Kraft General manager Bill Belichick Mascot Pat Patriot League/Conference affiliations American Football League (1960–69) Eastern Division (1960–69) National Football League (1970–present) American Football... Major league affiliations American League (1901–present) East Division (1969–present) Current uniform Retired Numbers 1 • 4 • 8 • 9 • 27 • 42 Name Boston Red Sox (1907–present) See Nicknames before Red Sox for disputed nicknames Ballpark Fenway Park (1912–present) Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds (1901-1911) Major league titles World... Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor; born 21 April 1926) is Queen of sixteen sovereign states, holding each crown and title equally. ...

Description

This monumental building was designed by Gerhard M. Kallmann, Noel M. McKinnell, and Edward F. Knowles, three Columbia University professors, who won the nationwide contest in 1962 to design the building. Their design, which was chosen out of 256 entries, revolved around the theme of creating a public and accessible character for the headquarters of the city’s government (columns and eagles were out of fashion at the time). The architects were inspired in their aim for civic monumentality by precedents as varied as Le Corbusier’s works, especially the monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, with its cantilevered upper floors, exposed concrete structure, and its similar interpretation of public and private spaces, and Medieval and Renaissance Italian public spaces. Many of the elements in the design were abstractions of classical designs such as the coffers and the architrave above the cement 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, responsible for construction, which took place from 1963 to 1968. Columbia University is a private research university whose main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ... Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, widely known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887– August 27, 1965), was a French Swiss born architect, famous for his contributions to what is now called modernism, or the International Style. ... Sainte Marie de La Tourette is a Dominican monastery in a valley near Lyon, France designed by the architect Le Corbusier and constructed between 1956 and 1960. ...

City Hall divides 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 other earth-toned materials such as quarry tile and exposed concrete, all of which are typical of Boston buildings. The use of earth tones such as brick emphasizes the idea of public access in this building

Side view of City Hall.

The intermediate portion of City Hall houses the public officials – the Mayor, the City Council, and the Council Chamber. The grand scale and the protrusion of various interior spaces on the outside are symbolic of the ideal public connection with these areas of city government. These dramatic outcroppings severely contrast with the character of the other two portions of the building, which stick to a more regular pattern. They create an effect of a small city of concrete-sheltered structures cantilevered above the plaza. The cantilevers are supported by exterior columns, spaced alternately at 14-foot 4 inches and 28-foot 8 inches, which are steel-reinforced The upper stories contain the city’s office space, used by bureaucratic agencies not visited frequently by the public, such as the administrative and planning departments. This bureaucratic nature is reflected in the standardized window patterns, which are of the typical modern office building style Boston City Hall, Boston, Massachusetts Source: Library of Congress Collection: Historic American Buildings Survey Origin: National Park Service URL: http://memory. ... Boston City Hall, Boston, Massachusetts Source: Library of Congress Collection: Historic American Buildings Survey Origin: National Park Service URL: http://memory. ...

City Hall was constructed using mainly cast-in-place and precast Portland cement and some masonry. About half of the concrete used in the building was pre-cast- roughly 22,000 separate components, and the other half was poured-in-place concrete. All of the concrete used in the structure, excluding that of the columns, is mixed with a light, coarse rock. While the majority of the building is created using concrete, precast and poured-in-place concrete are distinguishable by their different colors and textures. For example, cast-in-place elements are coarse and grainy textured because the concrete was poured into fir wood frames to mold it, while precast elements, such as trusses and supports, were set in steel molds to gain smooth, clean surfaces. This distinction can also be seen in the fact that the exterior poured-in-place pieces are of Type I Cement, a lightly colored cement, while the exterior precast components use Type II Cement, a dark colored cement. Another usage of color distinction can be seen in the fact that the base of the building starts out dark, using brick, Welsh quarry tiles, mahogany walls, and darker concrete and then, as you ascend, the overall color of the structure lightens, as lighter concrete is used. Sampling fast set Portland cement Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general usage, as it is a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar and plaster. ...

Reaction

After viewing the building for the first time, some in the architecture community promptly praised it, including Ada Louise Huxtable, who said, “What has been gained is a notable achievement in the creation and control of urban space, and in the uses of monumentality and humanity in the best pattern of great city building. Old and New Boston are joined through an act of urban design that relates directly to the quality of the city and its life." Ada Louise Rene (Landman) Huxtable (b. ...

The praise was not universal. Reportedly then-Mayor John Collins gasped as the design was first unveiled, and someone in the room blurted out, "What the hell is that?" City Hall is unpopular with Bostonians, who see it as a dark and unfriendly eyesore, and with workers in the building. The structure's complex interior spaces result in cavernous voids, a confusing floorplan, and the building is expensive to heat.

City Hall Plaza has long been cited as a failure in terms of design and urban planning. In 2004 the Project for Public Spaces identified it as the worst single public plaza worldwide, out of hundreds of contenders. Some efforts have been made to liven up City Hall Plaza, but these have been met with mixed reactions. Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. ...

On the other hand, the adjacent Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market buildings have met with stunning success following restoration. It is a place popular with tourists and natives alike, and generally well esteemed by architectural historians. Faneuil Hall, located near the waterfront and todays Government Center in Boston, Massachusetts, has been a marketplace and a meeting hall since 1742. ...

Government Center and City Hall Plaza reflect the idea in the 1960s that government, by its nature, must be sterile and non-confrontational. Having so many levels of government in one location -- city, state, and federal -- is perhaps necessary, but it inevitably crowds out the private sector from a huge section of the city.

The dislike of City Hall among many of the city's residents and workers is often due to ignorance of brutalist architecture. Without understanding of the intent and design the building does in fact seem large and oppressive. However, it should be noted that while many individuals do not appreciate the structure, many professionals in the industry consider it with high regards. It is even listed among the "Greatest Buildings" by Great Buildings Online, an affiliate of Architecture Week.^[1] In a poll of historians and architects, sponsored by the AIA, Boston City Hall was voted the sixth greatest building in American history.^[2] Unité dHabitation, Marseille (Le Corbusier 1952) Brutalism is an architectural style that spawned from the modernist architectural movement and which flourished from the 1950s to the 1970s. ...

On December 12, 2006, Boston mayor, Thomas Menino, proposed selling the current city hall and adjacent plaza to private developers and moving the city government to a site in South Boston^[3]. Thomas Michael Menino (born December 27, 1942) is the current mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, United States and the citys first Italian-American mayor as well as being the citys first non Irish-American mayor since 1884. ... South Boston is a heavily populated neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, located south of the Fort Point Channel and abutting Dorchester Bay. ...

External links

• Official City of Boston website
• iBoston on Boston City Hall
• Boston Phoenix article on Sick building syndrome complaints at Boston City Hall
• "Brutalized in Boston", a critical review of the building
• Project for Public Spaces
• CityMayors feature

Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a combination of ailments (a syndrome) associated with an individuals place of work (typically, but not always, an office building), though there have also been instances of SBS in residential buildings. ...

References