Cincinnati City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

. Completed in 1893, the

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a architectural style, style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revivalism (architecture), revival style incorporates 11th- and 12th-century ...

structure was listed in 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 ...

on December 11, 1972. The building was designed by Samuel Hannaford at a cost of $1.61 million. The main building comprises four and a half stories with a nine-story

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure that house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another building ...

. The building was constructed by the David Hummel company of Cincinnati using stone quarried in Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, and Indiana. Marble stairways and

wainscoting Panelling (or paneling in the United States) is a millwork wall covering constructed from rigid or semi-rigid components. These are traditionally interlocking wood, but could be plastic or other materials. Panelling was developed in antiquity t ...

originated in Italy and Tennessee, while granite columns were obtained from Vermont. Stained glass windows were installed which depict

Cincinnatus Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus () was a Roman patrician, statesman, and military leader of the early Roman Republic who became a famous model of Roman virtue—particularly civic virtue—by the time of the late Republic. Modern historians quest ...

and illustrate Cincinnati's early history. The first city hall was built on this site in 1852 and was demolished in 1888 to make way for the current structure. Construction costs for the building totaled $1.61 million of which $54,000 was paid to Samuel Hannaford as architect and construction superintendent.''The Cincinnati City Hall 1802–1896'', by Edwin Henderson

"Cincinnati's City Hall represents the prevailing architectural tastes at the time of its construction and the influence of H. H. Richardson on its designer, Samuel Hannaford. Richardson's winning design for the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce building was executed in the 1880s; however, the building's demolition in 1911 left City Hall the best remaining example of
Richardson Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th- and 12th-century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanesq ...
in Cincinnati. Samuel Hannaford practiced from 1858 until 1897 and made a significant contribution to the architectural heritage of the Cincinnati area."

An optical trick known as

forced perspective Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation bet ...

makes the building appear even larger than it actually is. As it becomes taller, its windows get smaller.

Notes

External links

* National Register of Historic Places in Cincinnati Towers in Ohio Clock towers in Ohio Romanesque Revival architecture in Ohio Richardsonian Romanesque architecture City and town halls on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Cincinnati Local Historic Landmarks Government buildings completed in 1893 1893 establishments in Ohio {{HamiltonCountyOH-NRHP-stub