[2] Its most prominent features include the square clock tower, with its gold-leaf dome and weathervane, and the Ionic neoclassical portico.

The classically inspired architecture echoes the arched windows on the nearby post office, built two decades earlier.

City Hall is a 2+1⁄2-story brick building with a full-height central portico on the front and a semicircular projecting wing on the rear enclosing a rotunda.

The exorbitant cost of the project, which was undertaken during the Great Depression, caused the building to be dubbed "Fagal's Folly" after Mayor Henry C.

[3] At the cornerstone-laying ceremony, James McKellum Smith of MMW said the city government "recognize[s] that they are now erecting a building which may still be the center of civic life in the Schenectady of 100 years from today".