City Hall Placed on National Register of Historic Places

City Hall - 1930

Main Lobby - 2006

The National Register is a list of properties that are significant in American history, architecture, archeology and culture. The building was nominated for the list by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources at the request of former Mayor Jack Cavanagh, who organized the petition to place the building on the National Register. The application was prepared by David Gall, a local architect.

City Hall was built in 1926 and is Winston-Salem’s only example of Renaissance Revival civic architecture. To finance the building, the city issued $550,000 worth of bonds. The Board of Aldermen held its first meeting in City Hall on Nov. 19, 1926.

City Hall remains largely intact as it was built, aside from renovations in the 1980s that replaced the windows and re-organized some interior spaces. It served continuously as the seat of city government until it was vacated in 2000 for extensive renovations that brought the building up to modern safety standards, installed new electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems, and restored the first and second floors to their 1926 appearance.

See a video tour of City Hall