GERHARD KALLMANN, “Boston City Hall” 1972

Sanguine chalk on paper,

Signed l.r., “G. M. Kallmann 1972”

With an autograph letter

In 1962, Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles won an international competition selected from 256 entries by a jury of prominent architects and businessmen to build Boston City Hall, but their design was subject to widespread public condemnation, sometimes vilified as one of the world’s ugliest buildings.  In the 1960s, Mayor John F. Collins reportedly gasped as the design was first unveiled, and someone in the room blurted out, “What the hell is that?” 

HOWEVER, professional architects have since described the structure as one of the ten proudest achievements of American architecture, and the building is a designated Boston Landmark. New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: “in this focal building Boston sought, and got, excellence. “Historian Walter Muir Whitehill wrote, “it is as fine a building for its time and place as Boston has ever produced. Traditionalists who long for a revival of Bulfinch simply do not realize that one does not achieve a handsome monster either by enlarging, or endlessly multiplying, the attractive elements of smaller structures.”