Dallas City Hall: The Unfinished Stone

Suzhou China, ancestral home of legendary architect Ieoh Ming (I.M.) Pei, is known for its rock gardens. Lion Grove Garden (Shizilin Yuan) is one of the four great classical gardens of Suzhou, famous for its Taihu limestone formations, which are said to resemble the animal namesake. Pei’s great-uncle, a merchant, bought the then-abandoned garden in 1917 and spent the next decade restoring it. 

Pei spent childhood summers there and credits those visits with shaping how he thought about space, even before he studied architecture. In Suzhou tradition, Rock farmers worked with porous volcanic rock. They would select rocks and chisel them carefully, opening them up to new possibility. The gongshi (scholar’s rocks) are prized for perforation and asymmetry. 

The farmer would then search for a spot near the edge of a lake or stream. Over time, the water would erode the shape, creating a piece of natural art. The rock farmer was not composing a finished picture, but instead trusting the natural erosion of time and the next generation’s vision to shape the garden’s destiny. 

The garden’s views follow the principle of jiejing, or “borrowed scenery,” in which the background landscape is incorporated into the composition. Pei said Lion Grove Garden taught him that, “the hand of man joined with nature becomes the essence of creativity.”

Suzhou gardens changed hands across dynasties. Each owner added their own flourish. Preservation meant keeping the material available for the next act. In a similar vein, each of Pei’s masterpieces was a stone he placed in the world’s garden. 

“The way those rock farmers did things pertains to a perception of time, and to a sense of accountability to time,” said Pei.

Pei believed architecture needed to answer to time more than other art forms; to prove itself over decades. It would be future generations who would eventually decide whether a building worked. Instead of following fashionable trends, he preferred his work to be judged on whether it suited its site and purpose well. 

Even when critics (of the Louvre Pyramid, for example) expressed initial dissatisfaction with a design, he remained calm. He seemed to trust that a longer view would eventually vindicate his decisions. The same bet every rock farmer made when they lowered an unfinished stone into moving water and walked home.

Here in Dallas, Pei’s philosophy is being tested in real time. Only a mile from where I live (coincidentally the same building where my organization, the Dallas Asian American Historical Society opened its physical location), his Brutalist City Hall keeps watch over the neighborhood. 

Completed in 1978, it is now under threat of demolition. Over the past year, Dallas City Council has been weighing whether to repair, sell, and/or demolish the building, due to short-term budget pressure. As an Asian American historical preservationist, this fate is unimaginable.  

Pei designed City Hall as a structure that actively welcomes the public. Its inverted pyramid leans outward over a broad plaza, inviting citizens in and blurring the line between government and community. The plaza hosts rallies, concerts, and informal gatherings, allowing residents to inhabit the space as Pei intended. Even the building’s dramatic angles were carefully planned to shield pedestrians from heat and weather while enhancing accessibility. Every element reflects Pei’s belief that the government should be transparent, participatory, and visible to the people.

Dallas City Hall was part of the city’s effort to redefine its global reputation after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Wrestling with the label, “city of hate,” then-Mayor J. Erik Jonsson launched a civic renewal program called “Goals for Dallas” to prove the city could remake its identity. 

City leaders didn’t just want a new municipal building. They wanted proof, poured-in concrete, that Dallas intended to become something else. Something better than the worst thing that had ever happened there. Pei accepted the assignment knowing exactly what it was: not an office complex, but a promise.

At the time, there was public argument over whether the design was too radical for the city. Pei was personally involved in the construction and cut the ribbon at the March 1978 dedication. New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable later ranked it among the most compelling urban buildings of the century.  

Demolition doesn’t just erase a monument; it removes the stone before anyone downstream has their turn to reinterpret it. Dallas City Hall was built to last well beyond the generation that commissioned it, as proof the city had a future worth building toward. Coverage of the 1978 opening explicitly framed the building as bringing a new “sense of permanence, monumentality, excitement and elegance to the city.”

Today, critics contend that Pei’s building is out of place in the modern downtown Dallas or obstructs revitalization efforts. These arguments lack the imagination and expansive vision that drove Pei’s career. Lion Grove Garden survived six centuries, not because nobody ever changed it, but because in each generation, somebody valued the inheritance and refused to let it become a ruin. They found a new way to use it, experience its space, and make it theirs. 

City Hall’s plaza was built with that same openness baked into its geometry. It has held concerts, protests, and even a beach party. Give today’s musicians, muralists, sculptors, performers, and culture bearers a foothold in the space and the plaza stops being a relic waiting on a verdict. This is the kind of vitality that roots a city to its history instead of erasing it. 

I joined a citywide movement to Save Dallas City Hall. While I share the same overall concerns and goals as other members of the coalition, the stakes feel deeply personal. What would it say about the Asian American community in our city if we didn’t protect this irreplaceable gift bequeathed from our elder? Especially when so much of our community’s presence in the narrative has been erased or treated as a footnote in history. 

Skeptics say the loss is a foregone conclusion. Developers’ pockets run too deep, city leadership’s moral courage too scarce. I choose to believe that Pei designed the building to remind us how strong we are. There is still hope. 

This fight over City Hall runs deeper than concrete and repair costs. It asks whether Dallas still sees itself as capable of inheriting something and building forward from it. Is the city that once built a monument to hold the whole community- grief, hopes, and all- able to keep its promises? Every stone Pei ever placed was an act of trust in people he’d never meet. The question is whether Dallas is willing to be worthy of it.