Portland City Hall

389 Congress Street

Second Renaissance Revival, 1909-1912

Carrere and Hastings of New York, one of the nation’s leading architectural firms at the turn of the twentieth century, designed Portland’s City Hall. Two previous city halls stood on this site. The first fell victim to the great fire of 1866; the rebuilt hall burned in 1908. Carrere and Hastings are perhaps best known for their design of the New York Public Library, but Carrere is said to have been especially pleased with his design here. The elaborate structure is based loosely on the French Renaissance Hotel de Ville. The building gracefully conceals its actual size through it relation to the courtyard front of the entrance. The tower stands almost 200 feet high, and the building houses a 3,000 seat auditorium. The granite for the building came from North Jay, Maine.