Houston City Hall: WPA Deco on Bagby Street

Houston had been talking about a proper city hall since nineteen twenty-nine, but the Great Depression froze the money. When federal Works Progress Administration funds finally came through, the city broke ground on March seventh, nineteen thirty-eight, and completed the building in July nineteen thirty-nine for one million six hundred seventy thousand dollars. Architect Joseph Finger gave it the WPA Deco treatment: stripped classical bones, Art Deco ornament, and Modernistic finishes that were the signature look of Depression-era civic buildings across the country.

Before this building opened, Houston's municipal government had bounced between locations at Old Market Square since eighteen forty-one, surviving two fires along the way. The city hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in September nineteen ninety.