Downtown Houston Arts Walk

Welcome to Houston City Hall, headquarters of the city government, on Bagby Street on the western side of downtown. From 1841 to 1939, Houston's city government was based at Market Square, which you'll visit later. In 1929 the city's planning commission urged a new civic center around this downtown park, but the Great Depression put the plans on hold. The city then won a Works Progress Administration grant, and construction began in March 1938 and lasted 20 months.

The architect was Joseph Finger, an Austrian-born Texan, who designed it in a stripped classical style, faced in regional white Texas limestone. Finger wanted statues of the city's founders, the Allen brothers, on the front terrace, but in the Depression the city couldn't afford the 8,000 dollars. The front faces Hermann Square, with a rectangular pool, lawns and live oak trees designed by Hare and Hare of Kansas City. Above the main entrances, look for medallions of great lawgivers, including Moses, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and Thomas Jefferson.

City Council meetings here are open to the public.

This Spanish Renaissance-style building is the Julia Ideson Building, part of the Houston Public Library's Central Library. It's named for Julia Bedford Ideson, who served as the library system's first head librarian for 40 years. The building was designed by Ralph Adams Cram, of the Boston firm Cram and Ferguson, and it opened in 1926 as the library's Central Library, replacing an earlier Carnegie building. From 1926 to 1976 it was Houston's only main library building.

In 1976 a new building opened nearby, named the Jesse H. Jones Building in 1989, and most of the Central Library moved there. The Ideson Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and it reopened in 1979. Today it holds the library's archives and manuscripts, its Texas and local history departments, and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

It also has a local legend. According to a story told in the Houston Chronicle, the building is haunted by the ghosts of Jacob Frank Cramer, a library caretaker, and his dog, Petey.