Boston City Hall one step closer to historic landmark designation

Boston’s Landmarks Commission voted last week to recognize City Hall as a historic landmark, paving the way for the divisive building to secure protection from major changes in the future. 

The vote, which occurred at a Commission hearing on Dec. 10, was unanimous. Now, Mayor Michelle Wu will get a chance to review the proposed designation. If she approves it, or takes no action within 15 days, the designation will be sent to City Council. That body can also approve the designation, deny it, or take no action. If it is approved by City Council or if members take no action within 30 days, the designation will become official, according to a spokesperson for the city.

City Hall, the brutalist bastion of local government at the heart of the city, was completed in 1968. The historic landmark designation process started in 2007. Last year, the Commission released a 51-page report detailing almost every aspect of the building and recommending that it receive historic landmark designation. 

If the designation is finally approved, any work on designated areas of City Hall would need to be reviewed and approved by the Commission in the future. The Commission recommended protecting the building’s exterior envelope, the brick paving that connects to City Hall Plaza, the main third-floor lobby, the fifth-floor Mayor’s Lobby, the Mayor’s office, the City Council Chamber, and other interior features. 

“While popular opinion has not always looked favorably on the building, Boston City Hall is widely recognized as architecturally significant [and] as a bold example of Brutalist architecture,” the Commission wrote in its report. “The concrete building presented a significant departure from the traditional brick and brownstone materials associated with Boston’s evolution, and its image has become an iconic part of the city’s cultural identity.”

City Hall’s distinct design was the result of an open architectural competition initiated by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in 1961. That same year, the master plan for Government Center was conceived to replace the historic Scollay Square. During the 1950s, Boston’s population declined, as did retail sales and the number of jobs in the city. Officials were forced to raise taxes, and residents continued to flee, according to the report. The idea of “urban renewal” took hold, and officials decided to demolish Scollay Square and replace it with a new center of civic activity. 

Two young architects named Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell won the City Hall design competition with a “bold and daring” concept that is today considered one of the preeminent examples of brutalist architecture in the U.S. and a favorite among some in the architecture world. 

Despite that, many residents remain divided over the aesthetic appeal of the building. Last year, Boston.com readers overwhelmingly chose City Hall as the ugliest building in Boston. 

When interviewed by The Boston Globe in 2012, Kallman defended the building’s artistic merit. 

“Art is not what pleases you immediately,” Kallmann told the paper. “It is not pretty-pretty, easy on the eye… That is operetta stuff. That is Rodgers and Hammerstein… That is not what we did.”