Old Norfolk City Hall, also known as the Seaboard Building and U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, is a historic

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 ...

located at

Norfolk, Virginia Norfolk ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. It had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Virginia, third-most populous city ...

. It was built in 1898–1900, and is a three-story faced with rusticated stone and yellow brick in a Neo-Palladian Revival style. It features a central pedimented engaged

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cu ...

with

Corinthian order The Corinthian order (, ''Korinthiakós rythmós''; ) is the last developed and most ornate of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Ancient Roman architecture, Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric or ...

pilasters that contains the main entrance. The building housed a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

and Federal courts until they moved to the Walter E. Hoffman United States Courthouse about 1935. Title to the building was transferred from the U.S. government to the city of Norfolk in 1937, when it was converted into a city hall. an
''Accompanying photo''
/ref> It was listed on 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 ...

in 1981. In 2009, it became Norfolk's main library. In 2014, the library was expanded to become the Slover Branch/Downtown Norfolk Public Library; the expansion included construction of a new atrium connecting the former city hall with the neighboring Selden Arcade. The library is named in honor of Samuel L. Slover, former mayor of Norfolk.

References

External links

Official website of current use - Slover Branch/Downtown Norfolk Public LibraryU.S. Post Office & Federal Courts Building, 235 East Plume Street, Norfolk, Norfolk, VA
3 photo, 19 data pages, and 1 photo caption page at

Historic American Buildings Survey The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

Historic American Buildings Survey in Virginia City and town halls on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Palladian Revival architecture in Virginia Government buildings completed in 1900 Buildings and structures in Norfolk, Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Norfolk, Virginia Downtown Norfolk, Virginia {{NorfolkVA-NRHP-stub