Edmonton City Hall

Edmonton City Hall
Edmonton City Hall
	City Hall's main pyramid and fountain. To the left is a cenotaph; in the background are the CN Tower and Epcor Tower.
General information
Type	City hall
Architectural style	Postmodern
Address	1 Sir Winston Churchill Square; Edmonton, Alberta; T5J 2R7
Coordinates	53°32′44″N 113°29′24.5″W / 53.54556°N 113.490139°W
Construction started	June 1990
Opened	August 28, 1992
Cost	CA$48.9 million; ($91.5 million in 2023 dollars)
Owner	City of Edmonton
Height	43 m (141 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	3
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Dub Architects
Main contractor	Stuart Olson Dominion
Awards and prizes	American Concrete Institute - 1993 Award for Excellence for Design and Construction
Other information
Public transit access	Churchill station

The Edmonton City Hall is the home of the municipal government of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Designed by Dub Architects, the building was completed in 1992. It was built to replace the former city hall designed by architects Kelvin Crawford Stanley and Maxwell Dewar in 1957, which had become outdated and expensive to operate.^[6]^[7]

Design

The building features two steel and glass pyramids, one 43 metres (141 ft) (ground to peak), on top of a three-storey concrete structure. One pyramid provides natural light for the main atrium, the other for the council chambers.^[8] The building also features a 60-metre-high (200 ft) clock (Friendship Tower) topped with a set of 23-carillon bells.^[9] Located on the eastern edge of the financial district in Edmonton's downtown, the building is the main feature on Sir Winston Churchill Square. In the winter, the fountain is converted to a skating rink.

The design for the city hall met with some controversy when it was first announced. The original design called for the building to be topped with four cones. The cones were meant to evoke the tipis that the First Nations once lived in on the site. The design met with negative feedback from the public as they felt it looked like dunce caps and nuclear reactors.^[10] Dub Architects then revised their design to replace the cones with the pyramids, with the pyramids designed to be evocative of the Rocky Mountains and the Muttart Conservatory.

Temporary renaming

The building was temporarily renamed the "Nathan Fillion Civilian Pavilion" for 24 hours in August 2021, for a debut of his most recent documentary. Nathan Fillion was born in Edmonton in 1971.

Incidents

A firebombs and shooting attack occurred inside Edmonton City Hall on January 23, 2024, causing an estimated $100,000 of property damages. No one was injured or killed.^[11]^[12]^[13]