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Minneapolis City Hall

City Hall of Minneapolis line art illustration (click image to enlarge)

Artist's notes:

The drawing of the Minneapolis City Hall was completed late summer in 1995. By this time, I had already illustrated many of the notable buildings and landmarks, and moved on to drawing some of the less prominent ones, including buildings that held a special interest for me. This is one of those buildings. At the time, the area in front of the courthouse was under construction, and I stuck into the site with a camera and sketchbook to capture images I knew might not be available to me later on down the line. The drawing took about 2-3 weeks to complete. The clock tower shows a time of 10:21 - which represents October 21, which is my birthday.

Information about the Minneapolis City Hall:

The Minneapolis City Hall - also called the Minneapolis Courthouse - was designed in 1888 by the architectural firm of Long & Keys. Construction on the building went on until 1909 and the final cost was in the area of $3.5 million dollars, considerably more expensive than the original $1.5 million that was budgeted for the project. It replaced an earlier building that served as the city hall, but that was too small to fit the ever expanding city's needs. The design is based on the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The building's style is known as "Richardsonian Romanesque" At the time, it was the tallest building in the city, and remained so until 1929 when the Foshay Tower was built. The exterior of the building is very rough looking, and the blocks used are made from Ortonville Granite and weigh in the area of 20 tons.