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:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)