Chicago City Hall

Chicago City Hall forms the west half of a single building shared with Cook County government, designed by the Chicago firm Holabird and Roche in a classical revival style and completed in two phases, the county's east wing in 1908 and the city's west wing in 1911, with the whole structure formally dedicated on February 27, 1911. Its exterior is defined by colossal Corinthian columns of Woodbury granite, each roughly 118 feet tall and 9 feet wide, giving the building a monumental civic presence typical of early twentieth century American municipal architecture. In 2001 the city installed an extensive green roof atop the building, now holding some 20,000 plants across more than 150 species, part of an early and influential experiment in urban rooftop ecology. The roof's beehives have since become one of the building's better-known features, producing roughly 200 pounds of honey each year that is harvested and distributed locally. The building continues to house both city and county offices side by side, a physical expression of Chicago's dual layer of municipal government under one roof.