An Airy Fortress

Ever since Boston's new $21.6 million City Hall was designed in 1962, it has been the focus of controversy. Most architecture critics consider it one of the great buildings of the 1960s, a richly textured, concrete-and-brick structure that reflects the influence of the late architect Le Corbusier and, in its emphatic use of raw concrete, of the contemporary English "Brutalists" as well. But to most citizens, it looked too for-tresslike for comfort.

Dedicated last week, the new City Hall draws 5,000 Bostonians every day to register to vote, pay taxes, buy licenses and be assigned to jury duty. Those who expected to find the building's interior gloomy and intimidating have been surprised by its airy openness. It is bathed in natural light, which pours down a central courtyard and through wide light shafts rising the full height of the nine-story building. It is extraordinarily accessible, with a subway station nearby and even has a concourse running through its ground floor. "It is the nexus of a lot of pedestrian routes in the city," says Architect Noel McKinnell, whose firm, Kallmann, Mc-Kinnell & Knowles, won the competition to design the building as the centerpiece of Boston's 60-acre Government Center.

Once inside, the visitors see soaring public spaces as stunning and vast as any Piranesi conceived in his 18th century etchings. Two tremendous lobbies serve as civic areas capable of holding crowds of sit-ins or celebrators. A magnificent ceremonial flight of stairs leads, like a cascade of red Boston brick, from one lobby up to a huge city council chamber and the mayor's offices.

"The major areas of City Hall's interior were designed to lend dignity to the interaction between people and government," says McKinnell. "We felt that we had a bigger client to satisfy than just municipal department heads--the citizenry. Otherwise you have 1984, with a faceless bureaucracy running your affairs for you." Whether the citizenry has come to appreciate it or not, Boston City Hall, inside and out, can hardly be accused of being faceless.

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