Louisville Metro Hall in downtown Louisville is home to the offices of the Louisville Metro Mayor, the Jefferson County Clerk, and the Courts of Appeal and State Supreme Court. Built in 1835, it was registered as a National Historic Site in 1972.
The building was designed by Gideon Shryock, but when he resigned in 1842 it was completed by Albert Fink. The doric portico was built on a huge scale, and some people did not like it. The Louisville Daily Journal called it an "elephantine monstrosity." A fire in 1905 required major renovations, and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright saved it from possible demolition in the 1940s calling it an example of Old South architecture.
The government of Louisville moved in 1842, and mayor James Guthrie hoped to make the building the Statehouse of Kentucky if the state government moved from Frankfort to Louisville. However this was not to be, and the building was nicknamed "Guthrie's folly". Ironically, when the Confederate forces occupied Frankfort during the Civil War, the state government temporarily did move into the building. Before the abolition of slavery, slave auctions were held in the building, alongside those that held abolitionist rallies. When Louisville and Jefferson County merged in 2003 the building was renamed the Louisville Metro Hall.
Several statues of important figures of Louisville history are present at the hall's grounds. A bronze state of Kentucky Statesman Henry Clay sits on the main floor. Outside the building are statues honoring the city's namesake French king Louis XVI and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.
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