City Hall was designed in the 1800s by John McComb Jr. and Joseph Francois Mangrin, and completed in 1812, the front façade was finished in fine granite, and the rear in inexpensive plaster, because it was believed that the city would never stretch further north than Park Row. By 1840 there were as many buildings north of City Hall as their were south of it.

As near-sighted as the City was in designing the building’s façade, it was no more forward-looking in its allocation of municipal office space. When the five boroughs consolidated in 1898 the bulk of the City government had to be relocated to the new Municipal Building one block away. Only the mayor’s office and a few other portions of the executive branch remained in the old City Hall.

Marcus’ prose account of the old City Hall is remarkably similar to that of Trinity Church in chapter two, "Lower Broadway." Both pieces take up an elegiac stance vis a vis the ornate nineteenth century structures they describe. Marcus is noticeably saddened by the force with which the newfangled skyscraper demands the undivided attention of architectural critics and pedestrians alike. And yet while he laments the haste with which New Yorkers forget these old-fashioned treasures, he insists (as ever) on the inevitability of their being out-done. They are best understood as "venerable old men" who derive their authority in part by the imminence of their passing from the world.