The Manhattan Municipal Building: A Skyscraper Built for City Hall
Exterior photograph by Ariel Kaplan, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0
The Municipal Building has a problem that most skyscrapers do not: a street runs right through it. Stand on Chambers Street and the columns, arch and vaulted passage make a government office building look like a gateway to the city. That was the point. New York needed room for its growing municipal government, but it also wanted a public building worthy of City Hall across the street.
By the 1880s, City Hall could no longer hold the agencies of a growing city. After years of debate and architectural competitions, the city selected a design by William M. Kendall of McKim, Mead & White in 1908. Foundation work began in 1909. The building was completed in 1914, although city offices began moving in the year before.
Kendall made the awkward site his advantage. The building bridges Chambers Street, with a barrel-vaulted passage under a monumental screen of Corinthian columns. The open plaza and triumphal arch give the narrow plot the air of a civic square. At the south end, a subway entrance was incorporated into the structure. The city's Department of Citywide Administrative Services calls it the first New York building to include a subway station at its base.
The great colonnade and arches at Chambers Street. Photograph by Tdorante10, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
High above the 25-story main building is a tower crowned by Civic Fame. The gilded copper figure, designed by Adolph A. Weinman, stands on a globe and holds a five-pointed crown representing the five boroughs. It is easy to miss from the ground, but it completes the building's message: this is the headquarters of an enlarged New York City, not an office block that happens to house clerks.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building in 1966, calling it one of the few monumental skyscrapers of the early twentieth century. In 2015 the city renamed it for David N. Dinkins, who had worked there as city clerk and Manhattan borough president before becoming mayor.
Who owns the Manhattan Municipal Building today?
The City of New York does. Its Department of Citywide Administrative Services manages 1 Centre Street, which houses the comptroller, public advocate, Manhattan borough president and other municipal offices. The old passage beneath the building is open to pedestrians rather than cars. Even as its agencies change, Kendall's columns still give the everyday work of the city a grand front door.
City Hall Park and the Municipal Building in an early twentieth-century postcard. Unknown photographer, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Sources
- NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Municipal Building designation (1966)
- NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services, David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building
- AK Manhattan Municipal Building.jpg (image: Ariel Kaplan, CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Chambers St Centre St td (2022-03-04) 11 - Manhattan Municipal Building.jpg (image: Tdorante10, CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Civic Fame atop the Municipal Building 01.jpg (image: PortableNYCTours, CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Brooklyn Museum - Municipal Building - Joseph Pennell.jpg (image: Joseph Pennell, Public domain)
- City Hall Park - New York (1).tif (image: Unknown photographer (scanned by and courtesy of Derzsi Elekes Andor), Public domain)
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