Pasadena City Hall

Pasadena City Hall, completed in 1927, serves as the central location for city government in the City of Pasadena, California and it is a significant architectural example of the City Beautiful movement of the 1920s.HistoryIn 1923, the people of Pasadena approved a bond measure issuing $3.5 million towards the development of a civic center. City Hall was to be the central element of this center. The San Francisco architecture firm of Bakewell and Brown designed City Hall, which has elements of both Mediterranean Revival Style and Spanish Colonial Revival Style architecture. It was completed on December 27, 1927 at a cost of $1.3 million. It measures 361ft by 242ft, and rises 6 stories. There are over 235 rooms and passageways that cover over 170000sqft. The defining dome, located above the west entrance, is 26ft tall and 54ft in diameter. On July 28, 1980 the Civic Center District, including Pasadena City Hall, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as listing #80000813.The City Hall has long been a favorite shooting location for filmmakers. The courtyard was used in the 1995 movie "A Walk in the Clouds" to portray a Napa Valley town square. It has also been used as an embassy in the "Mission: Impossible" television series, and a villa in Charlie Chaplin's Oscar-nominated 1940 film "The Great Dictator." Pasadena City Hall also served as the city hall of fictional Pawnee, Indiana, in the television show Parks and Recreation. The dome is visible through the window of the main characters' apartment building in the television show The Big Bang Theory, set in Pasadena.