The Berwyn Municipal Building, also known as Berwyn City Hall, is a historic public building located at 6700 26th Street in Berwyn,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

. The building was constructed in 1939 as a

Public Works Administration The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recove ...

project. The architecture firm of Burnham & Hammond designed the building in the PWA's characteristic

PWA Moderne The Art Deco style, which originated in France just before World War I, had an important impact on architecture and design in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. The most famous examples are the skyscrapers of New York City including the Em ...

style; their design features square massing, a flat

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

and

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

exterior, prism-shaped

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s, and

reeding Reeding is a technique wherein a number of narrow ridges called "reeds" are carved or milled into a surface. __NOTOC__ Numismatics In numismatics, reeded edges are often referred to as "ridged" or "grooved" (American usage), or "milled" (Britis ...

above the entrance. While the pilasters are in keeping with Moderne design, their prism shape is unusual; they may have been influenced by Burnham's earlier work or by Czech Cubism, given Berwyn's substantial

Czech-American Czech Americans ( cz, Čechoameričané), known in the 19th and early 20th century as Bohemian Americans, are citizens of the United States whose ancestry is wholly or partly originate from the Czech lands, a term which refers to the majority o ...

population at the time. The building originally housed Berwyn's city offices, its library, and its police and fire departments. The police department left in the 1960s, and the library closed its branch in the building in the 1980s; the city government and fire department still used the building as of 2001. An addition was placed on the building in 1991 to give it an elevator in compliance with the

Americans with Disabilities Act The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or ADA () is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ...

. The building was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on August 8, 2001.

References

City and town halls on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois Streamline Moderne architecture in the United States Government buildings completed in 1939 Buildings and structures in Cook County, Illinois Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Cook County, Illinois City and town halls in Illinois {{CookCountyIL-NRHP-stub