Northup and O'Brien designed Winston-Salem City Hall, the Renaissance Revival civic building in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina. Designed by the architectural firm Northup and O'Brien and built in 1926, this three-story, U-shaped Renaissance Revival building greets you in brick; its first floor is faced in rusticated stone. Look up: the flat roof is finished with a limestone cornice and a balustrade with shaped balusters, details that frame the sky above the facade.
Pause to imagine the site before this structure — the home of D. H. Starbuck and his family once stood here. Think too of municipal change: Salem's town offices were housed in Salem Town Hall until consolidation in 1913, and this building later became the civic anchor your eyes now meet. The hall was renovated in 2000 and recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
Standing here, you can feel how design and civic history layer on the same footprint. Picture the rusticated stone at the base rising to the limestone cornice, across the balustrade's shaped balusters, and along the U-shaped brick facade.