TOWN HALL. A building for the legislative and administrative business of a town or city. In the wider sense it comprises two chief divi sions, the public offices of the Mayor and various municipal administrations. and the chambers for the meetings of the legislative bodies of the city (Aldermen and Council ). In small towns court rooms and a jail are added, and a large public hall is also often provided. A belfry and clock-tower is a feature of nearly all French. German, Flemish, and British town halls, and of many of the more notable American examples. The French treat with especial effectiveness the entrances, lobbies, and grand stairways of their town halls.
The oldest examples of the town hall in Eu rope belong to the Middle Ages. They date from the time of recognition of the right of municipal self-government, of which they are the expression. In Southern France the town hall of Saint An tonin (twelfth century) is one of the oldest in Europe. In Italy there grew up by the thirteenth century almost as many States as cities. each of which provided itself in time with one or more municipal buildings according to its particular form of administration. ((f these the greater part date from the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, some of the most important being those at Cremona (1245) : at Sienna the superb red brick Palazzo Pnbblico with its slender tower (1239) ; at Pistoia the two palaces del Podesta and del Commie (1294-1385) ; at Florence the vast Palazzo Vecehio ( 1298 ) , with its impressive tower overhanging the street ; the Doge's Palace at Venice; the elegant Palazzo del Consiglio at Verona (1473). The Renaissance added but few to the Italian list. In ( ierlthilly the Thithaus or Municipal Council house appears in the four teenth century (e.g. Brunswick), hut the finest
and most numerous examples belong to the Renaissance, as at Bremen, Cologne, Lfibeek, Al tenburg, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, with pic turesque towers and high gables. But few medireval town halls remain in France, that of Compii%gne being the finest (late fifteenth cen tury).
The P‘enaissanee gave France the fine town halls of Beaugeney. Rheims, Rouen, Lyons. and Paris. the last two now replaced by modern edifices. recalling the original strnetures. The Paris ex ample is the largest and most splendid of modern town balls, especially in its interior decorations. Very notable are the sumptuously ornate Belgian town halls of the fifteenth century at Brussels, Louvain, Client. Bruges, and Ondenarde and the tine Renaissance structure at Antwerp. In Great Britain it was not until the nineteenth century that the town hall became important; it forms one of the most interesting and successful sub jects of recent architectural design, as, for ex ample, at Sheffield and at Oxford. The splendid new town hall at Hamburg is the finest of recent German works in the same line, far superior to the modern Gothic town hall at Vienna.
In the United States the Philadelphia City Hall is the largest and ugliest of modern exam ples; that at New York, dating from 1809, one of the most refined and elegant. The earlier town halls of the United States follow Colonial or 'Greek revival' models; the more recent are in the style of the French Renaissance or in what may be called the neo-Roman style. The major ity lack distinctive architectural merit of a high order, but recent designs show improvement, and there are a few among them worthy of high praise. See MUNICIPAL ARCHITECTURE.