Alameda City Hall

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Description 

The Alameda City Hall is the major civic landmark remaining from the city's initial period of economic prosperity created by the expansion of the railroad network in the closing decades of the 19th century. Constructed a little over twenty years after the City received its charter in 1872, the building summed up the civic aspirations of the Alameda citizenry. Because the City of Alameda was the first in California and the second in the United States to operate its own power plant, opened in 1886, the City Hall had the benefit of incandescent lighting, a significant luxury. Monumentally conceived by George Percy of the firm Percy and Hamilton, the design reflects the current fashion for the Romanesque Revival Style initiated in this country by Henry Hobson Richardson and used in his famous Allegheny County Courthouse design of 1884-1890. The Alameda City Hall modestly echoes that building in its general format. The firm of Percy & Hamilton designed about 200 buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area including the notable Stanford University Art Museum and the Children's Playhouse in Golden Gate Park. -- Historic American Buildings Survey

Tags 

19th Century (37,781) Alameda County, California (207) Alameda, California (11) Brick (42,462) Built 1895 (688) Built during 1890s (7,635) California (4,456)

City hall (825) Have Street View (46,146) Owned by local government (11,500) Percy & Hamilton (3) Romanesque (2,722) Thomas & Son Day (1) Victorian (19,698)

Update Log 

• January 3, 2017: New Street View added by Bill Eichelberger
• April 28, 2012: Imported photos from HABS/HAER

Sources 

• HABS CA-415 - Alameda City Hall
• Bill Eichelberger - wallyum [at] hotmail [dot] com
• National Register database - Reference number 80000791 (Search for documents)

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