Students of I.M. Pei’s architecture would never say the man was not intentional about creating buildings that told stories about the cities they were in. Dallas City Hall is one of those buildings: a Brutalist structure of concrete and metal, cantilevered to provide shade over the adjoining plaza, the “yes and” that came after one of the darkest moments in the city’s history. Neither Pei nor the man who brought him here, J. Erik Jonsson, can weigh in on the current debate about the fate of Dallas City Hall: Pei died in 2019 at the age of 102, Jonsson died in 1995 at the age of 93. But we do have history to explain their vision.
When John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963, Dallas became known as “the city of hate.” Mayor J. Erik Jonsson was one person uniquely tied to the day—he was on deck to introduce Kennedy at a luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart that would follow the motorcade. Instead, he was tasked with telling the 2,500 or so gathered that Kennedy had been shot. The fallout continued. Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of City Hall. Groups began canceling conventions in Dallas. Companies reconsidered relocating to the city. By the next year, Mayor Earle Cabell resigned to run for Congress. Jonsson became mayor in February 1964, and later said that he inherited a city that was “drifting,” and “it was extremely difficult to see how to pull people together.”
He proposed a set of goals for Dallas, working with residents throughout the city to craft them. He also promoted the idea of building a new city hall—one that told the story of a city moving forward. To build a new People’s House, he turned to architect I.M. Pei…