Manhattan Municipal Building Editorial Image

The Manhattan Municipal Building, at 1 Centre Street in New York City, is a 40-story building built to accommodate increased governmental space demands after the 1898 consolidation of the city's five boroughs. Construction began in 1907 and ended in 1914,marking the end of the City Beautiful movement in New York. William M. Kendall of the noted architectural firm McKim, Mead and White designed the building, which was the first to incorporate a New York City Subway station into its base. Enormously influential in the civic construction of other American cities, its application of Beaux-Arts architecture served as the prototype for the Terminal Tower in Cleveland, and the Wrigley Building in Chicago, in addition to the Seven Sisters of Stalin-era Soviet architecture. Located at the intersection of Chambers Street and Centre Street, the Municipal Building, which stands 580 feet (177 m) tall, is one of the largest governmental buildings in the world. It houses thirteen municipal agencies of New York City, and until 2009, when the Manhattan Marriage Bureau moved to another city building at 80 Centre Street, 18,000 people were married in its second floor chapel each year. There are 25 floors of work space served by 33 elevators, with an additional 15 stories in the tower. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1966, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.