One day after Mayor Walsh vowed to fly a flag in support of transgender rights until the state legislature passes a bill enabling them, workers took it down and replaced it with a Polish flag, in honor of the 225th anniversary of Poland's first constitution. They moved the flag to a pole on the Cambridge Street side of City Hall.
John Keith shows us the new flag flying in front of City Hall - in support of rights for transgender residents. Mayor Walsh and other city officials raised the flag yesterday.
Queen Elizabeth, who turns 90 today, visited Boston during our revolutionary bicentennial in 1976 and visited with Mayor White at City Hall. as shown in these photos from the Boston City Archives. Read more.
Rendering of a re-lit CIty Hall.
Mayor Walsh's office today announced a plan to bathe the exterior of City Hall with a new generation of light fixtures that will supposedly make it look more attractive even as they save on energy costs. Read more.
But first, the city is looking for a company that wants to start running events and other features on City Hall Plaza - when it's not being used for Super Bowl rallies, Boston Calling, Donna Summer disco bashes and the like. Read more.
Members of the 80,000-strong Ukrainian community in the Boston area gathered at the lower level of City Hall today to celebrate Ukraine's independence from a much larger country that pretty much surrounds it, a country whose successor state was mentioned a couple of times in speeches, but not by name and not in happy tones.
Ukrainians - and City Councilor Michael Flaherty - waved the country's blue-and-yellow flags and listened to Ukrainian singers: Read more.
Can you spot Waldo in Adam Castiglioni's photo of Boston City Hall from this morning?
The National Endowment for the Arts has given Boston a $100,000 grant to embed artists in city departments, the mayor's office announced today. Read more.
What's not to love? 2012 photo.
ArchDaily interviews a trio of architects writing a book about the glory of 1960s and 1970s concrete architecture in Boston and why they prefer to call it "Heroic" rather than "Brutalist." For starters, not all concrete buildings are brutalist. Equally important, they say, all that concrete reflects an era in which city leaders managed to revitalize a city that had been somnolently declining for decades. Read more.
Mayor Walsh today unveiled two "gender-neutral" restrooms at City Hall with markings that replace the "Men" and "Women" signs that once hung on the doors.
In a statement, the mayor said: Read more.
West Roxbury Academy students plan a protest outside City Hall tomorrow over BPS plans to shut their school and send them somewhere else in the system.
A T rider forwarded photos of fliers posted on the wall on the outbound Orange Line platform at State Street this morning calling for the protest between 4 and 6 p.m. outside City Hall.
A Twitter-enabled Christmas tree in the lobby of Boston City Hall lets anybody around the world change its colors just by tweeting at it.
Plunkett Prime Props watched as a peaceful protest over the Ferguson grand-jury decision by abtou150 people shut down Beacon Street in front of the State House around 11:30 p.m. on Monday.
Paul Weiskel photographed a protest outside City Hall around the same time:
JB Parrett looked up at the underside of City Hall:
Boston City Hall. Ugly, but love the angles.
Boston Magazine reports that MassPoetry has raised $10,000 to keep its Poetry on the T placards going this summer (then, in September, UMass Boston will pick up the tab).
Ed. note: Fans of public poetry should also check out the elevator banks at City Hall, where they've been posting poetry since back in the days when Tom Menino was still mayor. The current poems seem to focus on 4/15/13, or at least, on the floors I tend to frequent.
Among the several exercises during the weekend "Urban Shield" first-responder drills was a simulated hostage taking inside the Boston City Council chambers at City Hall.
SWAT cops from around the Boston area first navigated their way up a darkened set of stairs to the fifth floor, then, as they scanned a hallway with their guns, made their way into the chambers.
First responders from across the area will be practicing responding to emergencies at various locations on Saturday and Sunday. Tomorrow, here are the ones you might happen across (there are also sessions at the T's training facility in South Boston and on Moon Island):
What else could be causing the buckled floor tiles that Amurphbu photographed today on City Hall's second floor?
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
