New York City is home to the Empire State Building. This iconic skyscraper was built in the 1933 film when King Kong jumped towards the attacking biplane and charged from the top floor. Los Angeles is home to the historic Griffith Observatory, the setting for James Dean’s knife fight in the 1955 film “Rebel Without a Cause” and the place where the swooning lovers swing among the stars in the 2016 film “La La Land.”
And Dallas, well, Dallas has problems.
Dallas City Hall, a brutalist building that once served as the headquarters for a dystopian corporation in the 1987 sci-fi cult film RoboCop, has been damaged. The famous and imposing structure, designed by renowned architect IM Pei, faces deferred maintenance and repair costs of $50 million to $100 million, city leaders say.
The site, with its grand plaza, was conceived as a statement of civic pride under the cloud of a presidential assassination carried out on city watch. But a structure that was once meant to be positive and bold could tumble into the past if one strategy emerged as a potential solution.
“This building is a mess of our own making,” said Regan Rosenberger, a member of the Dallas Landmarks Commission who submitted a letter to city officials earlier this year asking city officials to begin the process of designating Dallas City Hall as a landmark. “We have not demanded proper maintenance of this building.”
City leaders say decades of dilapidation and neglect have caused a variety of problems. The roof needs replacing. The air conditioning system is outdated and the reflecting pool is leaking into the underground parking lot. Rothenberger cited dirty windows, broken lights, poor signage, outdated bathrooms and last summer, City Councilman Gay Donnell Willis was trapped in an elevator.
“The plaza is literally being pulled away from the buildings,” said City Councilman Chad West, who represents Dallas’ 1st District.
How did the situation get so bad? West and others say they have been sensitive to the priorities of city residents, who prefer funding for public safety, parks and infrastructure over maintaining City Hall.
“It’s like when you become a mother,” said Paula Blackmon, a six-year City Council member who represents the city’s 9th Ward. “You become so focused on everything else that you forget about yourself.”
Additionally, West said the building would not be large enough to house all of the city’s city halls, although Pei’s design left open the possibility of expansion to the south. That never happened, and as a result, some of Dallas’ services are scattered across the city, he said.
In a recent interview, West, who chairs the city’s Finance Committee, openly questioned whether city leaders should consider relocating businesses or “repurposing” sites. Some fear this could lead to the building being sold or even demolished to accommodate new development, given that a $3.7 billion renovation and expansion of the nearby convention center is underway. The project is a voter-approved project that will free up land for development as part of the reimagining of downtown Dallas.
“City Hall could be used as part of that, as part of an expansion, or to use the land for something else,” West told USA TODAY. “It’s not the City Council that decides to demolish it. Our job is to determine whether the city needs to remain in this building.”
The city’s finance committee will meet on Oct. 21 to consider potential maintenance and repair costs and discuss possible next steps.
The origins of Dallas City Hall
On November 22, 1963, as the motorcade carrying President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie made its final march through a crowded downtown Dallas, shots were fired from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The president was killed and the governor seriously injured.
The crime shocked a grieving nation and earned Dallas the nickname “City of Hate.” Years later, as part of a concerted effort to rebuild the city’s reputation, Mayor Erik Jonsson hired Pei, the rising star chosen by Jacqueline Kennedy to design her husband’s Memorial Library in Boston, to build Dallas’ new City Hall.
“Dark clouds have been hanging over Dallas for years,” said Greg Johnston, president of Preservation Dallas, a nonprofit organization that promotes the preservation and revitalization of the city’s historic sites. Leaders said they hoped the new city structure would symbolize “the strength and resilience of the city.”
The seven-story, $70 million project broke ground in 1972 and opened in 1978. The gravity-defying façade slopes outward at a 34-degree angle, and each floor is more than 9 feet wider than the floor below, according to Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (formerly IM Pei & Associates).
“The building is a fascinating amalgam, equal parts raw truth and magic,” Architecture Week wrote in 2009.
The author writes that the mayor’s incredulous reaction to the heavy shape at the top of the building apparently prompted Pei’s team to add three cylindrical columns that appear to be “load-bearing” but are not, and instead provide visual support. Pei, who died in 2019, went on to design famous landmarks such as the Louvre pyramid in Paris and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but Dallas City Hall has proven to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair, with some people thinking it’s art and others thinking it’s a monster. One publication ranked it one of the most beautiful city halls in the country.
But as the Paris Review once put it, its appearance as an “architectural bully” that “threats the individual and crushes anyone who attempts to invade it” made it an ideal stand-in for Omni Consumers Products’ fictional Detroit headquarters in RoboCop, a cautionary tale of a cyborg cop in a future corporate police state.
“With RoboCop, it’s even more dystopian,” Blake Kimsey said. A short story was published in D Magazine about a Dallas City Hall maintenance worker who retired in 2022 and was given a replica of RoboCop’s suit as a gift. “It’s not a beautiful building, but it’s a memorable one.”
Kimsey, now executive director of the Dallas-based Creative Writing School Program, grew up in a small town in North Texas and said, “We thought we were going to get snatched by Satanists or stung by killer bees and die. ‘RoboCop’ seemed to capitalize on those bad headlines. It hit home that this city was more sinister, and things were about to get worse.”
The fate of a landmark is at stake
That’s certainly true of Dallas City Hall.
Ultimately, city leaders will need to balance the costs of maintaining and modernizing the site with the benefits of preservation, West said.
“We have an obligation to make difficult decisions about what that will look like,” he said.
West said the available options, whether it’s a bond election or a tax increase, are unlikely to be popular. He said the city could sell some of its unused properties, but that would only cover part of the cost.
“We may have to look for another office,” Blackmon said. “There’s a lot of real estate downtown. I’m going to go here with an open mind. But if we’re going to stay here, we’re going to have to fix that.”
Katrina Whatley, a local real estate agent and community organizer who ran against West for the District 1 seat, said she believes the building has architectural and symbolic value and that talk of reusing the site is “just a statement from the Dallas City Council to enrich developers.”
Another citizen activist who has expressed cynicism about the potential sale of the site is Rudy Karimi, a member of the Dallas Parks and Recreation Commission. He hopes city leaders can strike a balance between maintaining the importance of Dallas City Hall while modernizing it to meet today’s operational needs.
“With thoughtful planning, we can effectively serve the city without losing its identity or completely destroying it,” Karimi says.
The building has special meaning for RoboCop fans, Johan Hoff, a Sweden-based moderator of two related fan sites, told USA TODAY: “We don’t ignore the fact that time moves forward. Movie locations come and go. If Dallas City Hall is eventually demolished, it will be a sad day for Robo fans, but the building will live on on screen.”
Preservationists hope that never happens, but Rothenberger said that when he called on the commission to act, it “acted with this very day in mind.” This groundbreaking process began in March.
He said Dallas has a long history of moving on to the next big project.
“Dallas City Hall seemed like an easy target,” Rothenberger said. “I don’t want to say I was right. Great historic buildings are still there because someone spoke up for them. … Future residents of Dallas deserve an iconic building as the seat of government, not an office tower.”
His Jan. 15 letter to the Dallas Historic Preservation Office said the structure is only 46 years old but meets several criteria for landmark status. Rothenberger pointed out that Boston City Hall, a similarly much-detracted Brutalist building, will soon be designated a Boston landmark.
“There’s an old saying: ‘You can’t fight City Hall,'” he wrote. “Maybe it’s time to fight.” for City Hall. “
