Austin City Hall is the seat of Austin municipal government, located at 301 W 2nd St in

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

(

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

). The current building was completed in 2004. It is the meeting place for the

Austin City Council The Austin City Council is the unicameral legislature of the city of Austin, Texas, United States of America. The mayor is included as a member of the council and presides over all council meetings and ceremonies. The current mayor of Austin is ...

Description

The current building was designed by

Antoine Predock Antoine Predock ( ; born 1936 in Lebanon, Missouri) is an American architect based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the principal of Antoine Predock Architect PC, the studio he founded in 1967. Predock first gained national attention with the La ...

and Cotera + Reed Architects, which was intended to reflect what ''

The Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885 by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the ''Galvesto ...

'' referred to as a “crazy-quilt vitality, that embraces everything from country music to environmental protests and high-tech swagger.” The new city hall, built from recycled materials, has solar panels in its garage.

History

Austin formerly operated its City Hall at 124 West 8th Street. In the 1980s, the City of Austin proposed a 60-acre

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

project for Austin's Warehouse District, which would have included a new city hall complex designed by urban planner

Denise Scott Brown Denise Scott Brown (née Lakofski; born October 3, 1931) is an American architect, planner, writer, educator, and principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia. Scott Brown and her husband and partner, Robert Venturi, ...

, along with a new location for the Laguna Gloria art museum, designed by architect

Robert Venturi Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925 – September 18, 2018) was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century. Together with h ...

. In 1987, partially in response to the Savings and Loan Crisis, the plans were shelved when the property was foreclosed upon. In 1999, Mayor

Kirk Watson Kirk is a Scottish and former Northern English word meaning "church". It is often used specifically of the Church of Scotland. Many place names and personal names are also derived from it. Basic meaning and etymology As a common noun, ''kirk'' ...

and the Austin City Council approved a $10.4 million tax incentive for the

Computer Sciences Corporation Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) was an American multinational corporation that provided information technology (IT) services and professional services. On April 3, 2017, it merged with the Enterprise Services line of business of HP Ente ...

(CSC) to construct a three-building complex on the same site slated for the failed city hall complex, under the stipulation that CSC funded the construction of a new city hall. The first two buildings (now home to

Silicon Labs Silicon Laboratories, Inc. (Silicon Labs) is a fabless global technology company that designs and manufactures semiconductors, other silicon devices and software, which it sells to electronics design engineers and manufacturers in Internet of Th ...

) were constructed before CSC vacated the premises before following through with the construction of the city hall building. In November 2004, the Austin City Hall officially opened in its current building at 301 W 2nd St.

References

External links

* Buildings and structures in Austin, Texas City halls in Texas Government buildings completed in 2004 Government of Austin, Texas Modernist architecture in Texas {{Austin-stub