Boston Globe: Council chamger closed after ceiling panel falls

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Council chamber closed after ceiling panel falls

By Joy, Globe Correspondent  |  May 5, 2004

Its architecture has been compared to a filling station, and its acoustics vilified as insufferable. But even the councilors who love to hate their cavernous City Hall meeting room aren't quite sure how to deal with what they found when they returned to work this week.

Over the weekend, an 80-pound mahogany panel came loose, plunging 30 feet and crashing on the desk of Councilor J. Scapicchio.

"It looks like a piece of Skylab," mused Councilor M. Tobin Jr., adding that his desk was covered in beige insulation and dust when he arrived for education budget hearings on Monday. "Thank God someone wasn't sitting there."

City workers discovered that the dozen 12-foot-square panels suspended high above the council floor are held in place by relatively small screws and that at least one more was loose and ready to go, said Galvin, chief of basic city services. Workers also discovered traces of asbestos, apparently missed when the building was supposedly cleared years ago.

Deeming the room a safety hazard, Galvin notified the council and Mayor M. Menino yesterday afternoon that he would be closing the chamber until the asbestos was removed and the ceiling tiles could be replaced with a lighter material, possibly corkboard. Repairing the room could cost as much as $100,000 and will take up to three weeks, Galvin said.

Scapicchio, who has made no secret of his dislike of City Hall and sponsored a measure with Tobin to sell the building earlier this year, was livid.

"It could have fallen right on my head," he said. "Obviously, I'm relieved it happened when it did, but I think it speaks to a larger problem. The building is falling down around us. Maybe City Hall has outlived its usefulness. Why would you spend $20 to fix a $10 watch? That's what we're doing every time we do repairs on this building."

Council meetings and hearings will take place in the Piemonte Room in City Hall until the repairs are finished.

The council has rarely been displaced in the past over maintenance issues, though a few meetings were held in Faneuil Hall when the chamber was renovated more than a decade ago. While the Piemonte Room is regularly home to a number of smaller hearings, some councilors said it would be difficult to hold their meetings there.

"It's definitely going to complicate things," Councilor Maureen E. Feeney said of the move.

Falling tiles are not the only reason those who work at City Hall gripe about the place. Constructed in the "Brutalist Modern" style between 1963 and 1968, the building is often called unsightly and derided for wasting open space and energy. Councilor at Large Maura A. Hennigan faulted Menino and the building's property management services for failing to detect the remaining asbestos. She said a key member of her staff recently resigned, complaining of the poor air quality in her office. The city should have examined the chambers more closely for safety, Hennigan said.

"I always thought the political situation inside was more dangerous," she said. "I just can't believe they didn't know there were issues. How can you not know? Someone could have been killed." 

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