New Haven

City Hall

City Hall, built in 1861 by Henry Austin during the Civil War. The gothic revival in England, led by figures such as John Ruskin for whom it represented a humane and aesthetic protest against ugly industrial towns, crossed the Atlantic with paradoxical effects. Without a historical context in which to evoke a critical recovery of medieval rural life, the style was used by religious, civic, and collegiate elites to embellish their authority and social distance from ordinary citizens.

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