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By adamg - 4/9/14 - 6:31 am
School bake sale at City Hall

BPS parents held a bake sale outside City Hall yesterday to make a point about the impact a $61-million shortfall in the school budget will have on their kids. Several city councilors bought baked goods in support.

By adamg - 3/23/14 - 8:23 pm
Government Center MBTA station under construction

The current Government Center bunker, um, T stop went up in the early 1960s as part of the transformation of Scollay Square into Government Center.

By adamg - 3/6/14 - 4:51 pm

Brian Appel, co-founder of Boston Calling, is scheduled to appear before the Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing on March 12 to seek licenses for both the already announced May 23-25 music festival on City Hall Plaza and for a second weekend of music Sept. 5-7, also on City Hall Plaza.

The application does not specify band names.

The hearing starts at 10 a.m. in the office's eighth-floor hearing room in City Hall.

By adamg - 1/29/14 - 3:17 pm
Inside Boston City Hall

If you've ever wanted to know what it feels like to be trapped at the bottom of a giant concrete well with no hope of ever escaping, climb up the large steps inside City Hall, then look way up.

Whatever demonspawn put you in that hell at least was thoughtful enough to provide a piano on which to bang your head.

By adamg - 1/14/14 - 8:44 pm
Menino painting

Tom Menino still gazes out at people heading toward one of the elevator banks and the zoning-board hearing room on the eighth floor of City Hall.

By adamg - 12/12/13 - 11:26 am
Mailbox on a bike

Neal Gaffey spotted this US Postmaster approved bicycle at City Hall today.

By adamg - 12/8/13 - 2:13 pm

One Thing That Makes City Hall Special

The Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics put together this video of people getting married in City Hall. Also see the Tumblr site.

By adamg - 11/25/13 - 12:10 pm
Too many trees

An irate citizen complains about the interior of City Hall these days:

Cultural oppression all over Boston City Hall lobby. Why do I have to constantly be reminded that I'm not part of the dominant culture every time I walk into MY City Hall? Where were the decorations for all the other holidays? What happened to Boston being so proud of its diversity???

By adamg - 9/15/13 - 6:59 pm

City Hall front

Marty Walsh says he would pay for universal K-1 classes by selling off City Hall. Unlike Mayor Menino, who once proposed selling off City Hall as well, however, Walsh says he would keep city offices downtown rather than trying to move them to South Boston.

Walsh says the money from selling off the 4.5-acre property would raise up to $150 million and add an estimated $6 million in tax revenues to city coffers from a landlord willing to buy the property, tear down the nine-story concrete bunker and build a new mixed-use development on it.

By adamg - 8/23/13 - 2:41 pm
City Hall under construction

The Boston City Archives have posted a collection of photos related to the creation of Government Center in the mid-1960s, including some of the demolition of buildings in old Scollay Square. As you can see above, the JFK building went up faster than City Hall. Below, look at how you used to be able to drive right up to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market:

By adamg - 4/18/13 - 11:26 am
Worker at City Hall pause to remember

Bennett Wilson reports City Hall set up screens so that workers and visitors there could watch the interfaith service.

By adamg - 7/1/12 - 6:16 pm
Bay Bypass map

Vincent Zarrilli, who's been pushing this idea of a double-decked bridge across Dorchester Bay and Boston Harbor since the 1980s, is still at it. We spotted this flier taped to the side of City Hall yesterday.

By adamg - 11/15/11 - 7:53 pm

A nose-holding citizen reports from City Hall:

toilet in mens bathroom on 6th floor of city hall (outside clerks office) is broken again. cant breathe in there and unsanitary.

Connoisseurs of City Hall men's rooms know the public facility on the fifth floor, right outside the mayor's office, is usually serviceable and gives you a feeling of owning the joint since it's a single-staller that is probably bigger than some department heads' offices.

By adamg - 6/29/11 - 11:24 am

Temporary 300th anniversary arch

The Boston Public Library has posted a number of photos by Herald-Traveler photographer Leslie Jones of the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations in 1930, including several showing the temporary arch the city erected on the site of what's now City Hall. Worth looking at large for all the details. And here's the reverse view, showing what was then an expanded Dock Square (now City Hall and City Hall Plaza). No doubt, Sam Adams just stood there, glowering.

Another view of the temporary arch

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

By adamg - 6/27/11 - 5:36 pm

City Councilor Mike Ross, who represents the two neighborhoods, says parents there have the lowest odds of winning the school assignment lottery of any in the city and that he's getting tired of being repeatedly put off by school and BRA officials - eight years after they rejected a proposal by parents to buy a private building and just give it to the city for a school.

By adamg - 4/22/11 - 5:44 pm

It began, John Pepper says, with a phone call Wednesday from City Hall: Could one of his Boloco restaurants supply burritos for a major announcement the mayor wold be making in front of City Hall on Thursday?

By scollaysq - 12/20/10 - 2:51 pm

A few years ago I ran across this large booklet/flyer, not dated but likely put out between 1960 and 1968, called "John F. Collins Look How Wonderful I Am". Ummm....not really. It's called Boston on the Move.

Leafing through it I was rather surprised to see our venerable Mayor was apparently in the process of trying to bring a World's Fair to Boston. There is an architectural rendering of the Fair, as it will look out in Boston Harbor (or near as I can make out, how it might look in St. Louis, Missouri)

By theszak - 12/11/10 - 5:49 am

Ask for the more complete stenographic machine record of the public meeting of Boston City Council.

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