Boston City Hall

Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles, 1968. Three young architects beat more than 250 rivals in a 1962 national competition, and their design turned the usual town hall upside down: the widest office floors sit at the top, cantilevered out over the plaza, while the civic rooms used by the public are expressed as projecting blocks lower down, as this 2025 view across City Hall Plaza shows. Few buildings divide opinion more: a travel website's readers voted it the world's ugliest building in 2008. For its defenders, it is the most important American brutalist building.