A tale of two City Halls

When I AI-Googled "buildings dedicated on November 14" (today), what was my pleasant surprise to see an image of Providence City Hall (dedicated November 14, 1878) at the top of the Google listings, which I had already been thinking about, in light of my observation of its striking resemblance to Boston's Old City Hall (1865). Here are some of their similarities:

• Both were built as the city halls of New England state capitals.
• Both were designed in a symmetrical, animated French Second Empire style made fashionable by the Parisian civic architecture of Baron Haussmann under the command of Napoleon III's.
• Both are topped by a bulbous Mansard roof "dome" with twin round "eye" dormers, a pressed-copper crown, and a central flagpole, inspired by the then-new addition to the Louvre in Paris. 
• Both were arranged in a tripartite structure with a projecting central bay (below the Mansard roof, for a "crown" effect to signify the high social standing of the mayoralty) and side wings with their own Mansard roofs, mirroring each other. 
• Both were built of New Hampshire granite, and were early examples of the use of mechanical stonecutting to create ornamentation for a lower cost than hiring craftspeople. 
• Both were designed by architects with middle initials "J.F.": Samuel J.F. Thayer designed Providence City Hall, and Gridley J.F. Bryant designed Boston's Old City Hall (with Arthur Gilman). 
• Both have double-columned porticos on their center entrances and central second-floor windows (with an additional one on Old City Hall's central third-floor window).
• Both have semi-rusticated ground floors (though Providence's is the basement, Boston's the entry floor).
• Both were threatened with demolition, until historic restoration and renovation in the 1970s made them beloved landmarks in their respective cities.

But these City Halls are far from identical twins.

View of Providence City Hall from Exchange Place
(now Kennedy Plaza), 1885. Photo by William Henry Mills.

Providence City Hall emphasizes its center-entrance bay more by simplifying its wings with upward stacks of triplet windows topped by trios of oculi and triplet dormers (from a later alteration). A trio of double arched windows upholds the Mansard roof, which is bordered in pressed copper and topped with a copper crown of festoons under the flagpole. The ground-floor rustication signifies a basement.

Old City Hall, Boston, c.1865. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Boston's Old City Hall has a more egalitarian distribution of tall arched windows and twin columns and pilasters, making its façade seem more three-dimensional and more uniform. Its center-entrance bay's double-columns rise one additional level, followed by a lower bank of windows with a pedimented portico, which raises the Mansard roof one more floor.

Since there is no documented evidence that Thayer's City Hall was directly inspired by Bryant's, though historians tend to assume the inspiration was there, it appears that both architects drew directly on the French Second Empire style that was sweeping the country as a way of increasing the height, space, fenestration, and visual distinction of civic and residential buildings. (In fact, the Mansard roof, named for French architect Louis Mansart, was invented to squeeze an additional level of living into the roofs of French buildings as a way to avoid paying taxes on that level, as the French were taxed by the number of floors in their buildings at that time.) Their visible differences in fenestration and composition also indicate different architects' visions.

These city halls also differed in another important way: the entirely different directions their histories took from the 1970s forward. 

Restored Providence City Hall interior atrium. Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel.

Providence City Hall was threatened with demolition in 1975 until Mayor Vincent Albert "Buddy" Cianci, guided by preservationists Antoinette Downing, Frank Mauran III, and Irving B. Haynes, initiated a top-to-bottom restoration of the building, which was finished in the 1990s. It remains in use as Providence City Hall.

Old City Hall interior before renovation.

Not so about Boston's Old City Hall. Just before the City Council, the School Committee, and Mayor Kevin White relocated to the new City Hall in Government Center, a meeting among White, Architectural Heritage Foundation founder and chairman Roger Webb, and architect Tad Stahl led to an initiative to adapt Old City Hall for office use. 

Old City Hall interior before renovation.

Unfortunately its lavishly ornate, detailed interior was gutted down to the studs and the bricks. But someone else would put a beautiful new interior in there: my father. In 1970-71, Leslie Larson designed Old City Hall's first commercial tenant, a French bistro called Maison Robert, run by a real Frenchman, Lucien Robert, and his wife, Martha Ann Rossing Robert. My father reused old wood panels salvaged from the gut-rehab of Old City Hall and integrated them into his trademark modern wood architecture that blended elements of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese and Scandinavian design. Original crown moldings and tall arched windows brought soaring wonder to the formal Bonhomme Richard dining hall upstairs. Exposed brick barrel-vaulted ceilings and walls became the structural and aesthetic basis for Ben's Café and Terrace downstairs.

Above are the only images of the interior I could find. They present a wood-warm aura for enjoying a vin blanc, filet mignon, vichyssoise, pâté de foie gras, and so much more authentic French cuisine. This ambiance was a magnet for celebrities including Julia Child and John Wayne, who ate here after his open-heart surgery at Mass. General.

Unfortunately, Maison Robert closed in 2004 when Lucien Robert retired, and Ruth's Chris Steak House occupies that space now, preserving a few of the panels my father reused. But the office reuse of Old City Hall inspired the Architectural Heritage Foundation to reuse other historic buildings for new purposes, as a model for adaptive reuse that is much followed today.

Just as Old City Hall's original design was a model for other French Second Empire civic buildings of comparable grandeur, including the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (1888) in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia City Hall (1894), and, yes, Providence City Hall.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

Bilis, Madeline, "Landmark: Boston's Old City Hall," Boston Magazine, November 21, 2017, https://www.bostonmagazine.com/property/2017/11/21/boston-landmark-old-city-hall/

"Maison Robert, a legendary French restaurant in Boston's Old City Hall," Vintage Boston Community, Facebook, March 27, 2024, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1043094216921473/posts/1080339146530313/

"Maison Robert, French cuisine and fine wines in Boston's Old City Hall, 45 School Street, Boston, Mass.," Historic New England, https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/gusn/317181

"Old City Hall," Wikipedia, last edited on 2 October 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_City_Hall_(Boston)

"Providence City Hall," Guide to Providence Architecture, https://guide.ppsri.org/property/providence-city-hall

"Providence City Hall," Wikipedia,  last edited on 31 August 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providence_City_Hall

Strahan, Derek, "Samuel J F Thayer: City Hall, Providence, RI," Lost New England, December 5, 2016, https://lostnewengland.com/tag/samuel-j-f-thayer/

Webb, Roger, "Saving Old City Hall: Memories of a Preservationist," Restoration 1969-71: Development through Preservation, OldCityHall.com, https://oldcityhall.com/restoration-1969-71.html