The Guildhall

The Cambridge Guildhall sits behind a sprawling, brick-faced facade that interrupts the medieval street pattern with a broad, flat expanse of twentieth-century stone. It functions as the city's civic heart, hosting council meetings and public assemblies on a site where town government has operated since the eighteen hundreds. During the second world war, the building served as a requisitioned dance hall for American servicemen, who filled the grand assembly rooms with music and jitterbugging while the world outside remained at war.