Edmonton City Hall celebrates 25 years under the pyramids that almost weren’t

A 25-year anniversary was celebrated on Monday for a building many a quarter century ago didn’t want to see built at all, period.

A noon-hour ceremony marked the silver anniversary. What is different today than when city council meetings were held a quarter century ago is how Treaty 6 lands are recognized as a part of the proceedings.

Many who took in Monday’s anniversary reminisced about how the roof line of Gene Dub’s creation would have recognized Edmonton’s Indigenous heritage.

What are pyramids now were supposed to be cones, to represent teepees.

“That was quite the time,” laughed former Mayor Jan Reimer, who sees the humour now about the public reaction. But then it was a different story.

“The furor behind that was incredible. When you think about it now it really was to pay tribute to the Indigenous roots. I think times change. Contexts change. But we also have a very beautiful pyramid here too that’s given us a signature building.

“There was just such a resistance at the time to building City Hall, period, that people would glom on to all sorts of different things. There was attempts to make the old city hall a historic site. There were attempts at plebiscites.”

The public saw the cones and thought of dunce caps for city council, remembered Dub.

“Alderman (Terry) Cavanaugh thought it looked too much like Three Mile Island,” he said. “One of the other aldermen was concerned that they looked like dunce caps and people would make fun of city council. But my feeling was it would have made a great symbol for Edmonton.”

So to rescue the project, city staff were dispatched to the libraries and malls to interact with the public.

“What they would yell about is cracks in the sidewalk and potholes. So nothing’s changed,” laughed project manager Bob Walker, who got credit again on Monday for bringing it in on time and on budget.

“When you’re involved in a building like this you get to appreciate what some of the elected officials go through,” he said of the spit and abuse. “We had comments. The comments you couldn’t read.”

Walker said Dub had to design something to compete against the office towers.

“And it did. The building inside I think is a true success, for functionality. Outside at night is spectacular. How you change the lighting in the pyramids at night for different occasion, it’s won many awards for Canadian architecture.”

The design was to use roughly the same footprint of the old city hall, that was criticized for a small council chamber, and insufficient meeting rooms. Dub said it was seen as an office building without much access.

The great city room that’s now 25 years old was designed to host as many as 200 functions a year. Mayor Don Iveson said according to a recent report, that’s close to 300 events annually now.