History
The building was finished in 1991 at the expense of ¥157 billion (about US$ 1 billion) of public money. It replaced the former Tokyo City Hall at Yūrakuchō which was built in 1957 and designed by Kenzo Tange (who also designed the said successor building). The former Tokyo City Hall is now the site of the Tokyo International Forum.
The building held the title of the tallest building (by roof height) in Tokyo, at 243 meters, from 1991 to late 2006, when it surrendered its title upon the completion of Midtown Tower.
Read more about this topic: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)