Old City Hall, also known as the Southern Market, is a historic complex of adjoining buildings in Mobile,

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

, that currently houses the History Museum of Mobile. The complex was built from 1855 to 1857 to serve as a city hall and as a marketplace. It was declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

in 1973, as a rare well-preserved example of a 19th-century multifunction civic and commercial building. and

History

The building was originally planned by the city in 1854 as the principal city marketplace for selling vegetables, meat, and fish. In February 1855 it was decided that the building would also house some of the municipal offices with approval on 1 June 1855 of $44,000 in municipal bonds to pay for construction. The architect for this initial building phase was Thomas Simmons James, a Mobile architect originally from

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. On 27 December 1855, while the new building was under construction, the existing city hall on Conti and Jackson Street burned. As a consequence, in May 1856, the city passed a resolution approving $40,000 to complete and expand the building with accommodation for the mayor, city clerk, city treasurer, and two city boards. Payment receipts indicate that the building was completed by 20 April 1857. In 1910 the building was altered by architect William L. Denham. A new council chamber was added above a new second floor bridge connecting the front and back of the central sections. The original open passageway between the two central sections was enclosed to create an entrance lobby and the stairway was reoriented to the east wall of the lobby. The complex was altered again in the mid-1930s by architect Frederick W. Clarke. Most of the work involved infilling some of the formerly open spaces with interior spaces. Also, murals by John Walker depicting scenes from local Mobile history were painted at this time. The complex was damaged by

Hurricane Frederic Hurricane Frederic, known in Latin America as Federico, was an intense and damaging tropical cyclone that carved a path of destruction from the Lesser Antilles to Quebec, in particular devastating areas of the United States Gulf Coast. Though ...

on 12 September 1979, causing the tenants at that time to vacate the building. It was later restored.

Description

The complex is

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style in design and comprises four rectangular sections connected by three arcaded passageways. The grouping is wide on Royal Street, long on Church Street, and the back is wide on Water Street. The building is

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

over

brick A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a unit primarily composed of clay. But is now also used informally to denote building un ...

construction with wood trim and

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

s. The two central sections form a U-shaped mass, fronted on Royal Street and extend to Water Street. They are two floors in elevation on Royal Street and one floor in elevation on Water Street. This central section is crowned with a central

octagon In geometry, an octagon () is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a ...

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, usually dome-like structure on top of a building often crowning a larger roof or dome. Cupolas often serve as a roof lantern to admit light and air or as a lookout. The word derives, via Ital ...

. The two annex wings are also two floors in elevation, although of lesser height than the central sections. The south wing annex is wide by long and faces Church Street. The ground floor of the south wing once housed stalls and shops for the market, but has since been altered to enclose the space. The north wing annex is wide and is much shorter in length than the south wing. The north wall is attached to the neighboring Gulf Coast Exploreum.

Museum

Beginning in 1997 the building was renovated to house the History Museum of Mobile. An addition was added to the back of the building in 2000 to house the museum's permanent exhibits and staff offices. The museum was closed for repairs for approximately six months following flood damage from

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a powerful, devastating and historic tropical cyclone that caused 1,392 fatalities and damages estimated at $125 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. ...

in 2005. The exhibits cover two large floors of the complex and chronicle 300 years of Mobile history. The museum normally has a six-month-long featured exhibit, special collections exhibits that are rotated periodically, and several permanent exhibits. The permanent exhibits include: the ''Old Ways New Days'' exhibit that explores Mobile's history from colonization to the present, and the ''Walls and Halls'' exhibit featuring furniture, antique silver, artwork, and other artifacts.

Images

Image:Old City Hall Mobile Cupola 2008.jpg, Detail of the cupola. Image:Mobile Market House LOC det 4a13425u.jpg, Photo taken in 1906. Image:Old Markethouse.jpg, HABS photo taken in 1934. Image:Museum of Mobile 02.JPG, One of a pair of antique statuary lions at the entrance to the exhibits.

References

External links