From any of the four corners that Chicago’s City-County Hall takes up, it seems like a fortress.

The exterior of the building is able to make any passerby feel tiny and insignificant by comparison. What goes on behind closed doors in the one hundred year old building isn’t accessible to most common folks and certainly not any random pedestrian. That’s pretty clear.

Catching a glimpse of the lions’ heads that litter the façade of the building’s exterior sides is supposed to summon a heroic notion of what transpires inside. Or it might be a warning. By dint of the building’s imposing stature, though, it doesn’t make a difference: walking through any one of the City-County Hall’s entrances doesn’t seem hospitable.

Oddly enough, though, it’s connected to the neighboring Daley Center which should make all that have business in these buildings feel that there was some effort to make government seem accessible.

After wondering around, up and down the rather bland stair wells, it’s actually relatively easy to find a window that grants any visitor a view of interior offices and the building’s light court. Seeing the rows and rows of windows looking out onto nothing should remind all of the futility of navigating such politically minded corridors. And of course, standing around too long in any one spot is bound to draw a few questioning stares from folks in grey flannel suits. There’s not an inhospitable air about the people that make up the city’s work force at City-County Hall, but it would seem that each employee can sense an interlocutor.

Despite the tossed off glances, workers on every floor appear to be engrossed in daily endeavors to the point that there’s no time for conviviality. It could be that working inside of a building that sports an impressive shell, but a bland interior – the indulgent metal work around the elevators notwithstanding – has relegated these folks to weak social graces.

More likely than not walking from one floor to another, as impossible as it might be to differentiate between each save for signs on everyone’s door, it’d be easy enough to simply walk past the Mayor’s office and not realize what one was passing.

Mayor Daley’s office and its accompanying waiting room don’t present themselves as one might expect. Only the oddly placed statue of a young George Washington makes the floor appear any different from its brethren. The fact that the water fountain closest to this office has seemingly fallen into disrepair – even the lion’s head that tops each of these off is gone – doesn’t indicate any sort off efficient and all knowing governmental body.

The architectural embellishments that adorn the exterior of City-County Hall, while pointing to nothing other than governmental excess are muted by the lack luster interior. From a design standpoint, the dichotomy is troublesome. As an average citizen most should be pleased that the chief executive of the city has chosen to eschew useless, interior adornment. Working in such inauspicious surroundings, though, citizens should be curious as to how the Mayor is able to dazzle visitors. There is supposed to be a garden that tops off the building. How we’re supposed to get up there, though, is still a mystery.