Manhattan Municipal Building
skyscraper in New York City
The David N. Dinkins Municipal Building (originally the Municipal Building and later known as the Manhattan Municipal Building) is a 40-story, 580-foot (180 m) building at 1 Centre Street, east of Chambers Street, in the Civic Center neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The structure was built to accommodate increased governmental space demands after the 1898 consolidation of the city's five boroughs. Construction began in 1909 and continued through 1914 at a total cost of $12 million (equivalent to $276,794,000 in 2024).
Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the Manhattan Municipal Building was among the last buildings erected as part of the City Beautiful movement in New York. Its architectural style has been characterized as Roman Imperial, Italian Renaissance, French Renaissance, or Beaux-Arts. The Municipal Building is one of the largest governmental buildings in the world, with about 1 million square feet (93,000 m2) of office space. The base incorporates a subway station, while the top includes the gilded Civic Fame statue.
The Municipal Building was erected after three previous competitions to build a single municipal building for New York City's government had failed. In 1907, the city's Commissioner of Bridges held a competition to design the building in conjunction with a subway and trolley terminal at the Brooklyn Bridge, of which McKim, Mead & White's plan was selected. The first offices in the Municipal Building were occupied by 1913.
The public source identifies “Manhattan Municipal Building” as skyscraper in New York City. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Manhattan, Municipal and Building.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Manhattan Municipal Building”, the useful work is to connect “skyscraper in New York City” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1156778. The Library of Congress control number is sh2018003104. Authority coordinates are 40.713, -74.004. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1909, 1914 and 2024.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Manhattan Municipal Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.