Old Norfolk City Hall, also known as the Seaboard Building and U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, rises in front of you. Built in 1898–1900, this three-story structure is faced with rusticated stone and yellow brick in a Neo-Palladian Revival style. Notice the central pedimented engaged portico with its Corinthian order pilasters — that portico contains the main entrance you see now.
The building served as a post office and home to Federal courts until those functions moved to the Walter E. Hoffman United States Courthouse about 1935. Title passed from the U.S. government to the city of Norfolk in 1937, and the building was converted into a city hall. It earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.
In 2009 it became Norfolk’s main library, and in 2014 the library was expanded and renamed the Slover Branch/Downtown Norfolk Public Library; that expansion included the construction of a new atrium connecting the former city hall with the neighboring Selden Arcade. The library is named in honor of Samuel L. Slover, a former mayor of Norfolk. Your view travels over the rusticated stone and yellow brick to the portico, and out to the new atrium joining this building to the Selden Arcade.