Find us on Facebook
City Hall banner

Things to do

Activities: Relax in City Hall Park on one of the many benches.

Read about the history of City Hall and Lower Manhattan on the many placards in the park.

Tours: City Hall is filled with hundreds of paintings and artifacts. Take a tour with the NYC Art Commission to learn about the collections as well as the architecture of the building itself.

Visitor information

City Hall
212.788.3000

HOURS

Open through tours only, call 311 (212-NEW-YORK from outside the city) for information.

ACCESSIBILITY

City Hall is wheelchair accessible.

LOCATION

260 Broadway, Manhattan.

Map

Nearby attractions

African Burial Ground
Battery Park City
Federal Hall
Lower East Side Tenement Museum
New York Stock Exchange

City Hall

A historic and beautiful home of government in Lower Manhattan

Completed in 1811, New York's City Hall is the oldest in the nation that still serves its original function. In its day, City Hall was erected at the northern boundary of Manhattan on land where the British once had a barracks, an armory and a prison. Today it sits in City Hall Park near many notable downtown sites. This house of government is both historically and architecturally significant.

Built between 1803 and 1811, the building was designed by New Yorker John McComb Jr. and the Frenchman Joseph François Mangin. Working on their only known collaboration, the two men designed a grand space with influences from the American-Georgian and French Renaissance styles. McComb also designed Hamilton Grange as a residence for founding father Alexander Hamilton, today a National Park. The rear of City Hall was initially built using brownstone instead of marble. The architects believed the city would never extend further north then the City Hall site so no one would ever see the unsightly backside of their grand building.

Many historic events have taken place inside City Hall's second floor Governor's Room and large rotunda. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant both laid in state in the rotunda and enormous crowds gathered to pay their respects. The historically appointed Governor's Room hosted such famed visitors as Albert Einstein and the Marquis de Lafayette. Today George Washington's desk, used when the city was the US Capital, is preserved there.

During the mid 1950s, the building was restored and the façade reclad in its entirety with Alabama limestone -- a bonus of this restoration was that finally the view of the back of this historic building was on par with the front.


City Hall

Just steps from the Brooklyn Bridge, City Hall has played host to presidents, dignitaries and scholars.

City Hall Park

Renovated in 1999 to include a fountain and manicured grounds, City Hall Park in the midst of downtown Manhattan is a prime spot to relax in the city.