{"id":426325,"date":"2025-12-05T11:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T11:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/426325\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T11:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T11:21:13","slug":"what-can-dallas-learn-from-boston-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/426325\/","title":{"rendered":"What can Dallas learn from Boston City Hall?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Dallas is buzzing with talk about our neglected City Hall and what to do with it. Some say it\u2019s time to leave the 1978 building behind. Others want the city to reinvest in the people\u2019s beleaguered house.<\/p>\n

In the thicket of that debate, Boston City Hall keeps cropping up. Situated about an hour away from the roughly 260-year-old Massachusetts house I grew up in, Boston\u2019s civic center is like Dallas\u2019 in many ways. <\/p>\n

Both structures are celebrated icons of brutalist architecture, which is to say, they\u2019re a pair of concrete behemoths that many architects and art critics consider beautiful for reasons I don\u2019t understand. <\/p>\n

And importantly, both have also faced serious maintenance issues in recent years. But while the scales in Dallas appear to be tipping toward the \u201ctear it down\u201d side of things, Boston has committed to staying in its concrete home.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not yet convinced one way or the other what Dallas should do with 1500 Marilla. I expect an upcoming report on the issue will shed light on that<\/a>. In the meantime, there are a few things Dallas can learn from my Yankee brothers and sisters. <\/p>\n

Opinion<\/p>\n

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For starters, the cost of commitment to Boston City Hall is high. <\/p>\n

Like its counterpart in Dallas, the building features a large plaza. Although it has been renovated, the 7-acre space had previously been described as \u201cbleak,\u201d \u201cbarren\u201d and \u201cwindswept,\u201d The Boston Globe reported. Those three words can just as easily describe the unwelcoming expanse at our own City Hall.<\/p>\n

But in 2022, the plaza at Boston City Hall reopened<\/a> after a renovation that added a \u201ckinder-brutalist\u201d playground, event and gathering spaces, public art and green infrastructure, according to The Globe. <\/p>\n

The project was originally supposed to cost taxpayers $70 million, but the total came to $95 million when everything was said and done, The Globe reported. Unsurprising, given the cost overruns government projects face so often. <\/p>\n

Zooming out to broader capital needs, a report dated October 2017 states that City Hall\u2019s systems and infrastructure are outdated, with many needing repair or full replacement. The report\u2019s subject is Boston City Hall, but it could just as easily have been Dallas\u2019. <\/p>\n

At the time, Boston was facing $225 million to $255 million in capital repair costs over the next 15 years, for City Hall, the plaza and two smaller buildings, according to the report.<\/p>\n

What those numbers look like today, I\u2019m not entirely sure. Based on my review of coverage of the issue and city of Boston documents, it\u2019s been difficult to pin down exactly what\u2019s been fixed and at what cost. I requested an interview with a city official, but didn\u2019t hear back in time for publication.<\/p>\n

Still, a review of Boston\u2019s fiscal year 2026 budget and capital plan indicates the city has a lot more spending to do: $8 million for a new elevator, $50 million for a second phase of the plaza renovations and about $78 million for HVAC. There is also a $30 million item for \u201cbuilding renovations at various municipal buildings including City Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Projects at Boston City Hall have been costly and are likely to continue being costly for a while longer, if the budget is anything to go by. But maintenance is challenging on another level, too. <\/p>\n

In 2023, WBUR \u2014 Boston\u2019s NPR station \u2014 reported that some of the building\u2019s hot water pipes were leaking<\/a> and needed fixing, but many were \u201cnearly inaccessible, completely encased in concrete.\u201d The city had to core into the concrete just to be able to repair and identify leaks, WBUR reported.<\/p>\n

The massive concrete wedge driven into the downtown Dallas ground shares some of those difficulties. <\/p>\n

\u201cDallas City Hall was built with extensive concrete construction, which makes access to plumbing and other mechanical systems more challenging,\u201d city officials said. \u201cWhile there are some accessible areas, such as cable trenches, overhead piping, and accessible mechanical spaces, much of the building\u2019s infrastructure runs through or behind concrete shafts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardly a model of efficiency and practicality. <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Dallas City Hall\u2019s aquatic challenges. There have been issues with water leaking from the reflecting pool into the parking garage underneath the plaza, city officials said. Years ago, Boston faced similar problems. <\/p>\n

Boston\u2019s plaza once had a water fountain, but The Globe reported that from the day it opened, it leaked \u201cpolluted water that looked like pea soup.\u201d Water even leaked into the subway tunnel below. The fountain was shut down in 1977. Dallas probably should have followed suit years ago. <\/p>\n

In 2018, Boston Magazine named City Hall<\/a> the best building in the city. \u201cThough it\u2019s been ranked one of the ugliest structures in the world, City Hall is, in fact, not ugly. It\u2019s brutal and it\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Boston City Hall gained historical landmark status<\/a>. Mayor Michelle Wu said \u201cthis milestone serves as an affirmation of our commitment to preserving this space as a vital symbol of our democracy and a center for civic engagement,\u201d The Globe reported. <\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees with that assessment. Boston.com asked its readers whether they thought City Hall deserved to become a landmark. Three-quarters said no<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Thomas Menino<\/a> served as mayor of Boston from 1993 until 2014. He hated the building<\/a>, The Globe reported, and once floated the idea of selling it. A 2013 column by Paul McMorrow describes Boston City Hall<\/a> as \u201can atrocious waste of space\u201d and advocated for tearing it down.<\/p>\n

As surely as both buildings are poured concrete, they\u2019re also loved and hated by the communities they serve. <\/p>\n

Dallas City Hall was designed by architecture legend I.M. Pei and opened its doors in 1978. Boston City Hall was designed by Kallmann McKinnell and Knowles and was completed in 1968. They aren\u2019t twins, but they\u2019re similar in a lot of important ways. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with wanting to save Dallas City Hall the way Bostonians are saving theirs. I get it; I love historic buildings. I was raised in a house that\u2019s older than the Constitution. <\/p>\n

As a transplant, I view Dallas City Hall as a sort of embodiment of the city \u2014 ambitious, unique, vast, a bit intimidating and striving to shift its titanic weight into the modern era. So, setting aside my confusion about the appeal of brutalism, I understand why so many people want Dallas City Hall to stay Dallas City Hall.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t think it will. The building is not designed to be efficient for any use, and it\u2019s hard to see a path that will make the likely cost of repairs affordable or justifiable, especially when the city has such limited resources and there are other historical properties that are far more deserving of a hefty investment. Looking at you, Fair Park. <\/p>\n

Boston\u2019s pricey journey to spare its city hall might be a good fit for them. Dallas has a lot of thinking to do before deciding whether to follow the northern path. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas is buzzing with talk about our neglected City Hall and what to do with it. Some say…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":426326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,11890,1596,14841,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-426325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-commentary","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-city-hall","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-tx","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115666702169971645","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}