Waterbury, Connecticut

Waterbury’s first City Hall, built on West Main Street facing the Green in 1869, went up in flames in 1912, torched by an arsonist. Cass Gilbert, one of America’s foremost architects of monumental buildings, won the commission for this replacement and work was begun in 1914. Gilbert used Vermont marble and North Haven brick to create a Colonial design, built around a rectangular court laid out as a sunken Italian garden. The lower story features white marble laid in rusticated courses while the upper stories are red brick with white marble Corinthian pilasters. In recent years, suffering from years of neglect and vandalism, the building has been condemned by the City’s own building department. Preservationists are at work to get City Hall to see its 100th birthday.