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Rough & Tough. With every structural detail baldly visible, from the exposed air-conditioning ducts in the ceilings to the marks of the wooden forms on the poured concrete piers, the new city hall is more bold than beautiful. But it possesses a rough-and-tough force and assertiveness that Jack Kennedy might, with his Boston accent, have called "vigah." Predictably, it has drawn its quota of quips, being labeled variously "the blockhouse," "an upside-down pagoda," and "the tomb of Cheops." But informal polls indicate that an increasing number of secretaries and taxi drivers are coming to like it. The architects hope that with time the city hall will accumulate the usual collection of flags and trophies. "It should bear the marks of the people who use it," says McKinnell. And Kallmann thinks that the building is ready for all the coming wear and tear. Says he confidently: "It isn't so delicate that it can't take it."
*Though Finnish Architect Viljo Revell had won Toronto's city-hall competition four years earlier, the last contest for a municipal building in the U.S. was for San Francisco's city hall in 1909.