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A piece of Dallas City Hall is for sale at a gallery on New York City\u2019s Lexington Avenue. It\u2019s a bench, to be precise, nearly identical to the wood-and-brass pews that have been in the City Hall lobby since I.M. Pei\u2019s building opened in the spring of 1978. The seller, who says the 9.2-foot-long bench \u201chas been authenticated through records and documents obtained from the Dallas City Hall Archive,\u201d is advertising the bench as a Pei creation, meant to reflect \u201cthe bold horizontal lines of the building\u2019s heavy brutalist fa\u00e7ade.\u201d<\/p>\n
I know it\u2019s still available because the gallery\u2019s operations manager with whom I spoke this week about the \u201cDallas City Hall Lobby Bench<\/a>\u201d emailed me that it\u2019s still in stock. Nice guy. \u201cI can place it on hold for you if you\u2019d like.\u201d<\/p>\n Look, I\u2019d like that very, very much because my hobby is hoarding old pieces of Dallas no one wants. It\u2019s just that $75,000 is a little steep. That\u2019s a tank of gas, man.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t say $28,500 is in my price range, either. But if I\u2019d just seen it three weeks ago and not Tuesday morning, when a friend first texted me about it, I could have snagged a much longer City Hall bench at that low, low price<\/a>. It looks just like those lobby benches, except much, much nicer \u2013 like, freshly refinished and repolished. <\/p>\n The ones still in the lobby look bad. But we\u2019ve already determined the city doesn\u2019t take care of City Hall. <\/p>\n Opinion<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n Alas. Barry Gream, a co-owner at 20cdesign on Riverfront Boulevard, told me Wednesday the long bench is en route to an architect in Europe. Sorry to be the bearer of la mauvaise nouvelle.<\/p>\n Gream, turns out, used to have both benches in his Design District storefront, until Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts<\/a> in Manhattan bought the shorter one for a show about architect-designed furniture, because a bench from Pei\u2019s City Hall really tied the show together. Gream would only say he sold it for \u201ca significant amount.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the refurbished City Hall benches, which 20cDesign on Riverfront Boulevard discovered in the City Store and recently sold and shipped to a European architect<\/p>\n Courtesy 20cDesign<\/p>\n When I started getting texts this week about these benches going for big money, I thought maybe I was on to something: It\u2019s moving day at City Hall, and everything must go! Which, turns out, isn\u2019t the story. Not yet. <\/p>\n But after spending way too long figuring out how two City Hall benches made it to Manhattan and France \u2013 and discovering along the way who likely made the benches \u2013 I did figure out one thing. Either officials in charge of disposing of the city\u2019s so-called surplus leftovers don\u2019t know what they have, or they just don\u2019t care. <\/p>\n The answer\u2019s likely a little of both. But whatever the case, our beloved cash-strapped city \u2014 which is looking to shutter libraries citywide and just reported that sales tax receipts are already $5 million below budget<\/a> four months into the fiscal year \u2014 quietly sold at least two valuable works from City Hall for pennies on the dollar. That\u2019s being generous.<\/p>\n Gream said Wednesday that 20cdesign acquired both benches about three or four years ago at the City Store<\/a> on Shady Trail off Walnut Hill Lane. That\u2019s where the city garage-sells its surplus junk, like beat-up bikes, aging computers and assorted goodies confiscated by the cops.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew exactly what they were,\u201d Gream said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been to City Hall before, and they have those benches in the lobby. We weren\u2019t sure how they ended up there, but somebody had to buy them.\u201d<\/p>\n These City Hall benches are worth tens of thousands of dollars. The city didn’t sell them for that much. Not even close.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n Gream said they took the benches to their refinisher, who stripped the oak top and restored the bronze bottom, which was intended to compliment the brass railings and finishes throughout City Hall.<\/p>\n I asked Gream what he paid for the benches. He really didn\u2019t want to say.<\/p>\n I asked if it was fair to say he acquired them for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what he sold them for?<\/p>\n After a beat: \u201cIf you only knew. Let\u2019s put it this way: I think the City Store just wanted them out of their way.\u201d<\/p>\n When I asked the city about it, I didn\u2019t get many specifics.<\/p>\n It was probably best to look at the City Hall lobby benches from afar.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n Via a city spokesperson, John Johnson, director of facilities and real estate management, confirmed what former city employees told me: Those benches likely came from Dallas Vital Statistics, which used to be on the ground floor of City Hall until it moved across the street to the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in October 2016. <\/p>\n \u201cAny benches moved as part of that relocation would have occurred prior to the current FRM executive team,\u201d Johnson said, \u201cand would have been handled in accordance with the City\u2019s surplus procedures in place at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n Which, it would appear, meant sending them to the City Store along with all the other discarded office furniture and supplies. The city does have a contract with Lone Star Auctioneers, through which it sold sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor\u2019s statue of Robert E. Lee for $1.4 million<\/a> in the summer of 2019. But it appears the city didn\u2019t consider that option.<\/p>\n The city likely considered them bulk trash, which is how the ones in the lobby are starting to look. <\/p>\n It\u2019s safe to say they didn\u2019t know who designed them. I didn\u2019t until Wednesday, when I reached out to Pei Cobb Freed & Partners to see if they had an inventory of Pei\u2019s furniture designed for City Hall.<\/p>\n Emma Cobb, a historian and senior editor at the firm, said she\u2019s seen City Hall benches for sale before. But they weren\u2019t designed by Pei. Instead, she said, they \u201cwere likely designed by the local associate architect for the project, Harper & Kemp,\u201d or, possibly, another Dallas architect. Pei would have only approved them for construction and installation. <\/p>\n Their connection to Terrell Harper and Harris Kemp only makes them more valuable to locals: Both were former associates of legendary architect George Dahl, and their work together spans from the Dallas Country Club to the State Fair Livestock Coliseum to the Jewish Community Center<\/a>. Kemp\u2019s house on Maple Springs Boulevard is even an official Dallas landmark<\/a>, unlike the building on which they worked with Pei.<\/p>\n If those benches look at all familiar, it’s because they’re the last things you see when you exit Dallas City Hall.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n Zaida Basora, executive director at AIA Dallas, knows those benches well. In 1999, she was a senior architect at City Hall and led the restoration of the building\u2019s interior, which included restoring the numerous benches scattered throughout City Hall. She also spent time as assistant director of building services, which handled all the building\u2019s furniture, and was even once in charge of the City Store when it was under the city\u2019s purchasing department.<\/p>\n Far as she knew, those benches should have been in storage \u2013 in the same warehouse where, she said, the city keeps Frank Lloyd Wright-designed desks and other furniture made for the Kalita Humphreys Theater.<\/p>\n \u201cThey could have asked the archivist if they needed to keep those benches, but the city doesn\u2019t have enough history to deal with those things appropriately,\u201d Basora said this week. \u201cThe city doesn\u2019t value what they have in these buildings designed by these renowned architects. There should be a policy that preserves the contents of the buildings, but they go in and take everything inside and sell it, because the people who own it don\u2019t realize what they have.\u201d<\/p>\n Seems like they might want to learn sooner than later. Before everything must go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A piece of Dallas City Hall is for sale at a gallery on New York City\u2019s Lexington Avenue.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5462,18281,42940,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-171187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-architecture","tag-commentary","tag-dallas-city-hall","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/NBECHFS3P5GO3G37ESPADMUNQY.jpg\")
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