Columbus City Hall is the

city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...

, in the city's

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English 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 district ( ...

Civic Center A civic center or civic centre is a prominent land area within a community that is constructed to be its focal point or center. It usually contains of one or more dominant public buildings, which may also include a government building. Recently, ...

. It contains the offices of the city's

mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a Municipal corporation, municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilitie ...

, auditor, and treasurer, and the offices and chambers of

Columbus City Council The Columbus City Council is the lawmaking body of Columbus, Ohio. It meets in the City Council Chambers located on the second floor of Columbus City Hall. Following the 2023 election, the City Council expanded from seven to nine members. Counc ...

. City Hall was designed in a Neoclassical style by the Allied Architects Association of Columbus. It replaced offices in the

Central Market Central Market may refer to: Fresh food markets *Adelaide Central Market, Australia * Cardiff Central Market, Wales *Central Market, Hong Kong * Central Market, Casablanca, Morocco *Riga Central Market, Latvia * Central Market (Columbus, Ohio), Uni ...

building as well as a former permanent city hall. The new city hall was built from 1926 to 1928, during a period of extensive construction building the city's riverfront civic center. An additional wing was added to City Hall in 1936. Renovations took place in 1949 and 1986, and the building was determined to be eligible for the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

as part of a historic district in 1988.

History

Columbus's first city hall was at the

building, but it moved to a new building on

Capitol Square Capitol Square is a public square in Downtown Columbus, Ohio. The square includes the Ohio Statehouse, its Capitol Grounds, as well as the buildings and features surrounding the square. The Capitol Grounds are surrounded to the north and west ...

in 1872. In 1921, a fire destroyed that building, now the site of the Ohio Theatre.

James John Thomas James John Thomas (1868 – August 6, 1947) was a Republican politician from the U.S. state of Ohio. He was the 40th mayor of Columbus, Ohio and the 36th person to serve in that office. He was elected on Tuesday, November 4, 1919 and defeate ...

, mayor of Columbus from 1920 to 1931, laid the cornerstone for a new City Hall on October 29, 1926. The building was dedicated on April 18, 1928. Initially built in three sections surrounding a central courtyard at a cost of US$1.7 million (), a fourth section was added on the east side of City Hall in 1936 to enclose the courtyard and provide additional office space. The structure was further renovated in 1949. City Council chambers, located on the second floor, were fully restored in 1986, and feature

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

elements echoing those found throughout the building. In 1988, the building was included as a contributing property to the Columbus Civic Center Historic District, nominated to the

. The nomination was prepared in the late 1980s by the City of Columbus's Economic Development Division. The district was determined to be eligible for the National Register on September 14, 1988, due to its association with community planning, engineering, government, and transportation in the city, and for its Art Deco, Neoclassical, and Renaissance Revival architecture. Even though its suitability was confirmed, the district was never listed. The south patio of City Hall facing Broad Street was named the M. D. Portman Plaza in 1996 after a long-serving City Council member. From 1955 to 2020, the plaza was home to a tall

bronze statue Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloids (su ...

Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus (; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italians, Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed Voyages of Christopher Columbus, four Spanish-based voyages across the At ...

by Italian sculptor

Edoardo Alfieri Edoardo Alfieri (1913 in Foggia, Italy – 1998 in Sanremo, Italy) was an Italian sculpture, sculptor. Although he was born in Foggia, southern Italy, his family was of Piedmont, Piemontese origin and soon moved to Genoa, where he spent his ...

. The statue was a gift to the city of Columbus from the citizens of

Genoa, Italy Genoa ( ; ; ) is a city in and the capital of the Italian region of Liguria, and the sixth-largest city in Italy. As of 2025, 563,947 people live within the city's administrative limits. While its metropolitan city has 818,651 inhabitants ...

. It was removed during the

George Floyd protests The George Floyd protests were a series of protests, riots, and demonstrations against police brutality that began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The protests and civil unrest began in Minneapolis as Reactions to the mu ...

in the city and will be placed in a less controversial location.

Attributes

The five-story building, constructed of Indiana limestone, was designed by the Allied Architects Association of Columbus in the Neoclassical style. Allied Architects also designed the adjacent Central Police Station building at West Gay Street and Marconi Boulevard, which opened on March 26, 1930, was vacated in 1991 with the opening of a new police headquarters building, and was renovated in 2012 as 77 North Front Street to allow the consolidation of various city government offices. City Hall was originally also the venue for the city's Municipal Court, and its proximity to the Police Station building provided for efficient movement of prisoners between the two buildings. The former third-floor municipal courtroom in City Hall now serves as a studio for the city's cable-carried government information TV channel. Columbus City Hall is one of the buildings contained within the Columbus Civic Center Historic District, nominated to the

in 1988.

Gallery

File:Columbus City Hall and trolley bus.jpg, City Hall's plaza c. 1940s File:Columbus, Ohio - Highsmith 04.jpg, The Portman Plaza in 2016, including the Statue of Christopher Columbus File:Columbus City Hall 01.jpg, Main entrance and east plaza of Columbus City Hall on Front Street File:Mayor Thomas lays cornerstone at City Hall photograph.jpg, Mayor

laying the cornerstone, 1926 File:Crowd at City Hall cornerstone laying ceremony photograph.jpg, Crowds at the cornerstone-laying ceremony, 1926 File:City Hall model photograph.jpg, City Hall model, 1926 File:Leveque Tower aerial (cropped).tif, Construction in 1926 File:Columbus City Hall U.jpg, The building before its 1936 addition

References

External links

* {{Columbus, Ohio 1928 establishments in Ohio City and town halls in Ohio Buildings and structures in Downtown Columbus, Ohio Government buildings in Columbus, Ohio Broad Street (Columbus, Ohio)

History

Attributes

Gallery

See also

References

Further reading

External links