[10][11] Its location has served as the seat of the city and county governments since 1853, except for a period from 1871—when the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the building—to 1885.

[13] The first Chicago City Hall in 1837 was in leased chambers in the Saloon Building on the corner of Lake and Clark Streets.

[11] The city next leased space in a building owned by Nancy Chapman, from 1842 until 1848, when Old Market Hall was constructed in LaSalle Street.

President Abraham Lincoln's body lay in state at the old courthouse city hall prior to his burial in Springfield in 1865.

[11] The courthouse bell was rung in 1871 to raise the alarm during the Great Chicago Fire before the hall burned to the ground.

The exterior cornice was removed in 1948 [16] and on March 21, 1957, a fire destroyed the original, Italian Renaissance-style City Council Chamber, which featured murals by Frederick Clay Bartlett and oak paneling imported from England.

[18] The Northwestern Mutual Life Building, which opened in 1914, bears striking similarity to Chicago City Hall, particularly its five-story colonnade and three grand entryways.

The main (east) County Building entrance features four additional high reliefs: a man studying a scroll; a man holding a sailing ship and fishing net; and two near-identical reliefs depicting an older version of the county seal flanked by two young men.

The Chicago City Hall Green Roof won the Merit Design Award of the American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) competition in 2002.

[citation needed] The building's interiors of were featured in the 1993 blockbuster movie The Fugitive, where Richard Kimble (played by Harrison Ford) is chased down the stairs by U.S.