Reviewed by: Michael Seale
THEN AND NOW: Old City Hall in the 60s
Reading time: 3 minutes
The new $90 million Huntsville City Hall opened this week downtown. So what better time to take a then and now look at its predecessor?
We wanted to compare the modern-day building to how it looked 60+ years ago before it gets torn down in the coming months.
All of the original photos are taken from Harvie P. Jones’ architecture notebooks from 1963 and were provided by the UAH Archives.
Then and now:
These pictures taken from Big Spring Park show just how much the lake has shrunk between then and now.
This view shows that there has been work done to the top of the old municipal building, particularly around the crown of the back of the building. The slight difference in distortion between the pictures makes me think that the original was taken at a higher elevation (notice the arches in the foreground). You can see how that would be possible in the next picture.
At some point, Big Spring Park had a large-scale redesign. You can see that the lake used to be bigger and calmer (probably from a lack of koi fish), the building to the right of the picture was replaced and more interestingly there appears to be some modifications to the elevation of the park and roads when you compare the slope of grass that’s in the picture on the right.
This section of the building probably has the most obvious change, with additional structures, new pavement and strangely the doors or windows look to have been shifted to the left.
If you’re interested in checking out other photo recreations of old Huntsville, we’ve also got then and now photos of Downtown Huntsville and Lowe Mill from the 90’s.
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