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The first City Hall was erected in 1839. In 1873, Reconstruction Mayor Scanlan built a huge city hall, the largest in the state at the time, at a cost of $470,000. The building burnt three years later. Unfortunately for the city, it had only been insured for $100,000. The insurance company held a design competition, won by Galveston architect Edward J. Duhamel, and erected a replacement structure in 1877 costing a measly $80,000. This City Hall and Market House lasted longer, until it burnt in 1901.
Local architect George E. Dickey designed the fourth and last City Hall and Market House to sit in this square. His was a Richardsonian Romanesque design, built in 1904. On the ground floor was the Market House; above were the city offices. The Market House moved in 1929, and the city offices followed in 1939. For the next 21 years, the building was leased to Greyhound for a bus terminal. Then the inevitable happened. The building burnt. The property sat as a parking lot until the Junior League, recognizing the historical significance of the square, sponsored its conversion into a grassy park filled with monuments to Houston history in 1976.
Still surrounded on two sides by buildings erected during Civil War times, the square was originally the center of Houston’s business district. The sidewalks of the square are paved with Houston history, and the concrete benches in the center are inlaid with tiles, designed by Paul Hester, of historic newspaper images of the square. If you look closely at the photographs, you’ll be able to spot at least three of the former city halls and market houses that occupied this square.
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