BOSTON CITY HALL

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Title	BOSTON CITY HALL
View	View of the southwest corner, depicting the entry
Notes	government
Work Type	city hall civic center
Style/Period	Modern Brutalism
Creator Name	Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood
Creator Nationality	American firm
Major Design Aspects	free-standing building monumental structure revealed influential
Elements & Spatial Types	plaza square plinth
Climate Type	cold temperate
Country	United States of America
City	Boston
State/Province	MA
Alternate Place Names	City Hall Plaza
Architectural Material	concrete, brick
Structural System	precast concrete
Dates	1962-1968
Century	20C
Designation/Awards/Inscriptions	city landmark
Photographer	Scott Gilchrist, Archivision
Date Photographed	7/31/1989
Subject Information	In the 1960s Boston City Hall popularized the New Brutalist style for government buildings in the U.S. The style uses massive forms with site cast concrete, which is left rough, often with marks from wooden formwork or texturing by hammer. The distinctly contemporary effect provides a stark contrast to Old Boston City Hall. The architects of City Hall explain that the structure of the building is suggestive of the workings of government. In this explanation the massive brick plaza flows into the building where there are large public spaces. The upper floors provide repetitive anonymous space for agencies, and the bold middle section is for the elected officials who are the conduits between bureaucrats and the public. The result is an uncharacteristically desolate building. Its massive brick plaza provides space for open-air concerts, and space to celebrate the sporadic success of Boston sports teams. But in the end, celebrants move on the more hospitable subway stations. Source: www.iboston.org/mcp.php?pid=cityHall&laf=con 'The winning entry in a national competition, the City Hall and its plaza are the focal points of the ninety-acre Government Center urban renewal area. . . (and) serve as the political and ceremonial center of the city. Programmatically, the ground floor is the most public, being primarily open circulation linking the plaza and the building interior. The brick paving of the plaza extends into the interior, and tall, open colonnades support the upper stories. Above this, the lower floors contain the most important ceremonial public rooms, the council chamber and Mayor's office, and these are expressed in an irregular composition of large concrete horizontals and verticals on the facade. The attic floors surround an interior courtyard, which brings light to the lower floors and organizes a ring circulation system off of which the city's bureaucratic offices are disposed. The regular rhythm of precast vertical elements shade the windows and recall classical dentils'. Source, www.greatbuildings.com / 'The massing of the Boston City Hall extends a time-honored tripartite arrangement of base, body and attic, evoking rootedness to the earth and pyramidal ascent toward the sky. But the City Hall's three-storied attic is the largest mass, while the body is the most perforated. Stoic and ordered in traditional buildings, the body here is exuberant and agitated, more expressive of unique interior domains than of systemic organization. By contrast, the more typically articulated attic is highly repetitive and ordered. From some vantage points, the attic seems not only the largest of parts, but also the heaviest, poised to crush the lesser mass of the body that supports it. From other vantage points, it appears mysteriously weightless, a horizontal monolith hovering above the cornices of nineteenth-century Boston.' Krieger, Ibid., p. 12.: Source: www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Boston_City_Hall.html
Credit Line	Archivision Inc. (all images copyright Scott Gilchrist / Archivision.com)
Collection Title	Archivision (architecture, urban design, gardens, landscapes and public art)
Collection information	Collection administered by the Visual Resources manager, Architecture Library, (402) 472-1193

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BOSTON CITY HALL

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