Donn Esmonde: City Hall is a shameful, shabby mess
Byron W. Brown vowed to clean house during his successful mayoral campaign. It is too bad that he cannot keep the city’s house clean.
City Hall — Buffalo’s symbolic home — is badly in need of a mop, a pail and a coat of paint.
From the filthy windows over the front doors, to the cobwebs, grime and graffiti on the 28th-floor observation deck, the 1931 art deco masterpiece is a glorious dump.
Seasons change, and years go by. But cleaning day seldom comes.
The problem predates Brown’s tenure. But the clutter is now in his court.
I visited the city’s centerpiece Wednesday. It looked like the civic version of a frat house.
Yellow police tape was tied to the handle of a broken door. The bronze entrance doors are tarnished, and adjacent stone walls are stained. The lobby, with its landmark murals, is as dim as a coal mine. Notices of everything from parties to bus tours are taped to the walls.
Within steps of the entrance, an alcove with an ATM machine is lit by a naked overhead bulb. The floor is filthy, and it looks like the walls were last painted during the Sedita administration. The door to a nearby service corridor was missing, with black plastic bags of garbage stacked in plain view.
I could care less if folks keep a messy house or a grimy private business. But this is a public building. Hundreds of folks walk through City Hall every day. Landmark Society member Ron Eaton leads a daily tour. A recent group included visitors from France, Utah and Ohio.
A grimy, dreary City Hall conveys a message about the municipality not just to visitors but to people doing business with the city.
Granted, the place is not a total dump. The floors on different levels seemed clean, and offices looked OK. The building’s exterior is getting a face-lift. But inside the doors, the appalling outweighs the acceptable.
The wood-paneled elevator walls are scarred and stained. On virtually every floor, notices are taped to the walls, just steps from bulletin boards. In what could stand as an analogy for city government, in-wall water fountains throughout the building have not worked for years. Some are covered in cardboard or wrapped with black plastic garbage bags.
If City Hall were a person, it would be the “Odd Couple’s” Oscar Madison. The place is a civic disgrace.
Brown cannot cry poverty. In urging the weakening of the financial control board, he touts the city’s record $76 million surplus. He should spend some of that money on brooms, mops and pails.
Maybe familiarity has blinded the mayor and our nine Council members, who walk through City Hall’s doors every day. But they cannot say they have not been told. A visitor’s complaint about the building’s “deplorable” shape prompted a recent story in The News. Civic activist Carol Bronnenkant wrote to the mayor after touring the building last month with visitors from Germany.
At least the discarded condoms Bronnenkant said she saw on the observation deck are gone. Still remaining are a busted downspout propped against a radiator, graffiti scrawled on the 28th-floor marker and a vast collection of cobwebs, cups and cigarette butts.
Mayoral spokesman Peter Cutler conceded the need for a cleanup.
“We’re going to institute a better maintenance system,” Cutler said, “as well as review the lobby lighting and improve the observation deck.”
It is about time.
If the mayor cannot straighten up his own building, how can anyone believe he can straighten out the city?
