New York City Hall - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

New York City Hall has played a central role in several films and television series.

  • Spin City (1996–2002), set in City Hall, starred Michael J. Fox as a Deputy Mayor making efforts to stop the dim-witted Mayor from embarrassing himself in front of the media and voters.
  • City Hall (1996) starred Al Pacino as an idealistic Mayor and John Cusack as his Deputy Mayor, who leads an investigation with unexpectedly far-reaching consequences into an accidental shooting.
  • In the 1984 movie Ghostbusters the Mayor summons the protagonists to City Hall to discuss the impending end of the world.
  • City Hall is also referred to in the folk song "The Irish Rover" as performed by The Clancy Brothers, The Pogues and The Dubliners:

In the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and six,
We set sail from the Coal Quay of Cork
We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks
For the grand City Hall in New York

Although the dates match those of City Hall, there is no recorded usage of Irish bricks in the building's construction. However the song mentions "The Irish Rover" never actually arrived in New York, but "struck a rock" and sank instead.

Read more about this topic:  New York City Hall

Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:

    That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Unthinking people will often try to teach you how to do the things which you can do better than you can be taught to do them. If you are sure of all this, you can start to add to your value as a mother by learning the things that can be taught, for the best of our civilization and culture offers much that is of value, if you can take it without loss of what comes to you naturally.
    D.W. Winnicott (20th century)