New mayor wants 'class-A upgrade' of City Hall

Bill Miller, a carpenter for the City of Cincinnati, cuts inserts from a floorboard for electrical and audio outlets during a remodeling of council chambers at City Hall in downtown Cincinnati Thursday December 29, 2005. At right is carpenter Dan Depenbrock. (Photo by Gary Landers/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

City work crews started on a minor renovation of City Council chambers last week, using the three-week winter recess to replace 14-year-old carpeting.

If Mayor Mark Mallory has his way, that would be just a start.

"The entire building is in need of a class-A restoration," he said in an interview last month.

Cincinnati's new mayor said he has formed some definite theories about the connection between great architecture and good government.

"A lot of thought went into the design of this building, and that was because a lot of great thought was to come out of this building," he said, sitting behind his desk in the mayor's office and gazing up at the ceiling. "That's why the ceilings are so high. You're supposed to rise up. And light -- light is so important."

Mallory came into the Ohio General Assembly just before a major renovation was completed in 1996. "When you walked into any part of the Statehouse, you were in awe -- and you were supposed to be," he said. "Over the years, we've lost that here."

The cornerstone of City Hall, a Samuel Hannaford-designed Romanesque building of massive Red sandstone, marble stairways and stained glass windows, was laid in 1888. The building also needs an overhaul of its mechanical systems for the information age, Mallory said.

"They are designed in one era and used in another," he said. The city no longer needs a jail in the basement, but it does have a television studio.

Besides, Mallory said, the brown, grey and beige color scheme in the mayor's office is "horribly wrong," he said.

The last major renovation of City Hall came in 2002, a $3 million project that mostly replaced roof tiles and restored walls.

"It's not anything that can happen any time soon, because there's no money for it," Mallory said of his planned renovation. But the mayor expects to ask the city's budget office for some figures on what a restoration would cost, and possibly seek private donations.