In another block, you come to City Hall. The main entrance on LaSalle Street is flanked by four relief panels sculpted in granite by John Flanagan and representing four features of municipal government: city playgrounds, public schools, the park system, and the water supply system. Inside the entrance, at landings on marble stairways to the right and left, are bronze tablets showing various city halls from the 1830’s to the present.The present Chicago City Hall-County Building was the first great civic work to follow the Burnham Plan for Chicago. The City Hall portion was erected at the beginning of the 20th century soon after the demolition of its predecessor on the site.The arquitects Holabird and Root had faced a challenging problem; how to design a building that would serve both as a monumental structure and as an efficient office building. This problem was intensified because the relatively small site made it necessary to build upward.In order to set the City Hall-County Building apart from other buildings in the area, a monumental classicism in the Corinthian order was used throughout the exterior elevation. The carefully designed building with its long colonnades of nine foot diameter columns resulted in a majestic and imposing building. With the resurgence of the administrative importance of the Loop, the political crossroads of the city and county are still to be found in this venerable gray granite building located exactly where the city and county governments have beenn quartered for more that 150 years since the 1850’s. The City Hall-County Building was and remains a successful symbol of ChicagoPhoto Chicago City Hall by Lucas is licensed under CC BY 2.0