Architects Mowbray, Uffinger and Ely dispensed with function to create one of America’s grandest Beaux Arts-style public buildings. Completed in 1908, the final price tag for the five story limestone building was more than $2.6 million. The enormous interior space under a heavily ornamented dome boasts carved marble and fine paneling, a grand central staircase, stained-glass skylights, and decorative plaster and wrought-iron works. The central dome inside is made of copper and is flanked by atria with glass ceilings. Developer Harry Grant paid to have the dome covered in 24 karat gold in 1986.
The previous home for the City’s administrative offices was a block to the north. In 1870 Broad Street in front of City Hall was paved with asphalt courtesy of Edmund J. DeSmedt, a Belgian chemist. It was the first recorded use of asphalt on an American street. Six years later asphalt was used to pave Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in anticipation of the nation’s Centennial in 1876. But today’s ubiquitous sticky black petroleum distillate was slow to catch on - as late as 1904 there were only 141 miles of paved asphalt roads in the entire United States.
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