Buffalo City Hall - Construction

Construction

City Hall was built by the John W. Cowper Company, the same firm who built the Statler Hotel and the Buffalo Athletic Club, also on Niagara Square. The cost of building City Hall was $6,851,546.85, including the architect's fees, making it one of the costliest city halls in the country.

Ground was broken on September 16, 1929 and the cornerstone was laid May 14, 1930. The building was completed on November 10, 1931, though parts of the building were occupied as early as September 1931. The building was dedicated in July 1932. City offices were previously located in County and City Hall.

In the summer of 2009, Buffalo City Hall started undergoing renovation on the south wing.

Buffalo's tallest building until 1970, City Hall has 32 stories, 26 of which offer usable office space. The total floor area is 566,313 square feet (52,612.2 m2) and the footprint of the site on Niagara Square is 71,700 square feet (6,660 m2). There are 1,520 windows from the first to the twenty-fifth floor. A practical design feature is that all of them open inward, making window washers unnecessary. It takes approximately ten days to clean them all. There are eight elevators to the 13th floor and four to the 25th floor. Curtis Elevator Company furnished the first elevators, with additional elevators supplied later by Otis Elevator Company. Buffalo City Hall is also one of only a few buildings in the United States that still employ elevator operators.

There are 5,000 electrical outlets, 5,400 electrical switches, and 21 motor driven ventilation fans. One hundred and ten miles of copper wire weighing 43 tons, and 47 miles or 180 tons of conduit pipe, serve the building, as well as 26 miles or 5 car loads of underfoot conduit. There are either 138 or 143 clocks (counts vary) regulated by a master clock in the basement, and 37 fire alarm stations distributed throughout the building.

It was originally equipped with 375 telephones and a master switchboard. External illumination was provided from dusk to midnight by 369 flood lights with an average candlepower of 350.

City Hall was designed and built with a non-powered air-conditioning system, taking advantage of strong prevailing winds from Lake Erie. Large vents were placed on the west side of the building to catch wind, which would then travel down ducts to beneath the basement, to be cooled by the ground. This cooled air was then vented throughout the building. Winds off the lake were usually strong enough to power air through this system.

In 1939, construction defects were discovered. Apparently, many anchors were left out in the walls behind the granite facings. and water seeped in, causing extensive damage.