Municipal Building

Also The David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, Manhattan Municipal Building

Workplace

Original Architect

McKim, Mead & White

Renovation Architect

WASA/Studio A (Wank Adams Slavin Assocs.)

Date

Constructed, 1914

Renovation, 1990

Podcasts

Municipal Building - by Gail Cornell

British Attack New York July/August 1776 - by James Kaplan

Designations

National Register of Historic Places in Oct 18, 1972

New York City Landmark in Feb 1, 1966

Description Show more

Home to thirteen of NYC’s municipal agencies, the Municipal Building is one of the city’s most imposing presences, with an influence on civic architecture that reached as far as Stalinist Russia. Its tower is topped by Adolph Weinman’s statue “Civic Fame” and its grandly proportioned arch frames a tunnel once traversed by Chambers Street traffic.

Manhattan Municipal Building resulted from 4 architectural competitions finally won by McKim Mead and White, then the largest architectural firm in the world; it was their 1st skyscraper and the 1st building to incorporate a subway station.

Tours

The Commons - The Heart of New York City

Map View

The David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building

1 Centre Street, New York City, NY, US 10007

Nearby

IRT City Hall Station	37 feet
Civic Fame	88 feet
WNYC	107 feet
BMT Chambers Street Station	122 feet
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) founded	261 feet
Surrogate's Court - Hall of Records	376 feet
Four Seasons	386 feet
New York in Infancy and New York in Revolution	402 feet
Five in One (5 in 1)	418 feet

#Architecture #Workplace #Summer Streets

Timeline

1914

1990

1914 - Constructed

Under construction, 1912

1990 - Renovation

14 Results, Show less

View of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Manhattan

40-story, 580-foot building at 1 Centre Street

Located in the Civic Center neighborhood In addition to Civic Fame, Weinman sculpted the rectangular allegorical bas-relief panels at the base of the building, which are located above the side arches. Civic Duty, above the smaller arch to the right (south) of the center arch, shows a female representation of the city alongside a child holding the city seal. Civic Pride, above the smaller arch to the left (north), depicted the city as a woman "receiving tribute from her citizens". There are heroic-scaled winged figures above the spandrels of the side arches: Guidance, a depiction of a female on the left arch, and Executive Power, a depiction of a male on the right arch. These are respectively topped by medallions representing Progress, a nude kneeling man with a torch in one hand and a winged sphere in the other, and Prudence, a half-nude kneeling woman holding a mirror while a serpent is curled around her right arm.

The structure was built to accommodate increased governmental space demands after the 1898 consolidation of the city's five boroughs.

The Municipal Building is one of the largest governmental buildings in the world, with about 1 million square feet of office space.

Total cost of $12 million in 1909-14, (equivalent to $230,068,000 in 2019)

The building is shaped like a ten-sided "C" This floor plan ensured that all of the building's windows would be able to receive direct sunlight and eliminated the need for an interior courtyard, which could not be lit by sunlight.

Among the last buildings erected as part of the City Beautiful movement in New York

Cupola detail

The top includes the gilded Civic Fame statue

Shields relating to Manhattan's historical and current governance were also designed for the facade above the ground-story colonnade 22nd-floor false colonnade, and elevators. The shields represent the historical New Amsterdam and the Province of New York, as well as the present-day county, city, and state of New York (the county of New York being coextensive with the borough of Manhattan).

Architectural style - Roman Imperial, Italian Renaissance, French Renaissance, or Beaux-Arts.

The base incorporates a subway station, which opened in 1913

Guastavino ceiling tiles on the south arcade