Public building construction has renewed focus on history

It used to be that municipal and government buildings were designed and constructed with a sense of magisterial pride, with shapes and materials expressing the values of democracy in stone.

With their Colonial brick facades and columns outside and wide hallways and high ceilings inside, they seemed to invite citizen participation. Marble stairways and granite foundations conveyed the conviction of permanence.

Then came the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, when the desire for economy and functionality often led to buildings that could have been easily mistaken for insurance offices.

There was Attleboro City Hall, for instance, a two-story, flat-roofed box with a glassed-in foyer and peaked roof tower covering a staircase. Inside, upper-floor hallways seem scarcely wide enough for two people to pass at once. Some of the building’s current features reflect a more recent rebuild to remove a courtyard and correct various problems.

North Attleboro’s gray town hall, while containing a generous, glass-fronted atrium, resembles nothing so much as a ship run aground.

Over the past several years, however, municipal architecture seems to have changed. Glass boxes are mostly out. Brick or wooden clapboard exteriors are in, as are traditional-looking columns and peaked roofs.

Hallways and staircases are becoming wider and easier to navigate, and interiors more inviting with brighter lighting and increased use of stone and masonry for floors.

“Actually, the traditional style of architecture has always been there where design has been used to fit the existing architecture of a particular town,” said Michael McKeon of Kaestle Boos Architects, whose firm has designed a number of municipal structures.

But McKeon said there has been a greater recognition lately of town hall and other municipal buildings as symbols of the localities that built them and the residents who use them. That, in turn, has led to a greater consciousness of how town-owned buildings look as well as function.

CN EN