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Municipal Building
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 Five Boroughs. Construction began in 1909 and ended in 1915, marking the end of the City Beautiful
movement in New York. Standing 580 feet (177 m) tall, its highest point is the second largest statue in Manhattan. The architectural firm McKim, Mead and White designed it
to be the first building 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, the Fisher Building in Detroit, and the Wrigley Building in Chicago, in addition to the
Seven Sisters of Stalin-era Soviet architecture. The building is similar to the Royal Liver Building (1907-11) built in Liverpool.
Located at the intersection of Chambers Street and Centre Street, the Municipal Building is one of the largest governmental buildings in the world. It houses thirteen
municipal agencies of New York City, and until 2009, 16,000 people were being married in its Manhattan Marriage Bureau each year. There are 25 floors of work space (served by
33 elevators), with an additional 15 stories in the tower.
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