As the brutalist Boston City Hall celebrates its 50th birthday, Aaron Betsky reflects on the building's history as a monument to social democracy, and wonders if proposed updates will bring it a happily ever after.

Let me tell you a fairytale. There once was an era in which government was something we admired. What's more, architecture was able to both represent and house the collective power that made us better and stronger. That era ended half a century ago, on or about 1968 ? the year that American youth rebelled, the Vietnam War revealed its pointless evil, Richard Nixon was elected, and the Boston City Hall opened.
I write this as the government is still shut down and the celebrations of the 50-year anniversary of Kallman, McKinnel, & Knowles' masterpiece is marked by efforts to rehabilitate it into a useful, softer-edged container of civic functions. Those dreams of restored grandeur seem like a romantic effort of backward-looking nostalgia in the deep-blue state of Massachusetts. In this fairytale, the Boston City Hall is less of an ogre that it has seemed to many people, including one of its mayors, than the frog waiting to wake up as a prince. The kiss will consist of planting trees on the outside and freshening up the interiors ? moves that are logical, but also counter to what makes the building such a statement of the civic.
Betsky describes the City Hall's interior lobby as one of the architects' greatest achievements
Here is the basic problem: it's not ju...