Dallas City Hall is the seat of Dallas municipal government, located at 1500 Marilla in the Government District of downtown Dallas, Texas (USA). The current building, the city's fifth city hall, was completed in 1978 and replaced the Dallas Municipal Building.

The City of Dallas’ idea for a centralized municipal center began when city planning consultants Harland Bartholomew & Associates presented their ideas in 1944. The idea was to relocate from the current Dallas Municipal Building to a grand Beaux-Arts complex of city and federal offices, a convention center and cultural facilities. Two sites downtown were possible contenders: one north centered around Federal Street and Akard, and one south centered around Young Street and Akard were marked as contenders.

Plans proceeded until cost estimates shocked city leaders and the plan was shelved, although land at the southern site was acquired by the city for future use.

The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy turned the world against the city, as Dallas became known as the “City of Hate.” Dallas Mayor Erik Jonsson made it a priority to reinvent the city’s image, and the “Goals for Dallas” program was enacted to accomplish this. One of goals, Design of the City, was summarized by the statement, "We demand a city of beauty and functional fitness that embraces the quality of life for all its people." This was the start of the movement to create a new modern City Hall and municipal center.

Dallas ( /ˈdæləs/) is the third-largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Divided between Collin, Dallas, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties, the city had a population of 1,197,816 in 2010, according to the United States Census Bureau.

The city is the largest economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area (the DFW MSA) that according to the March 2010 U.S. Census Bureau release, had a population of 6,371,773. The metroplex economy is the sixth largest in the United States, with a 2010 gross metropolitan product of $374 billion.

Dallas was founded in 1841 and was formally incorporated as a city in February 1856. The city's economy is primarily based on banking, commerce, telecommunications, computer technology, energy, healthcare and medical research, transportation and logistics. The city is home to the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the nation. Located in North Texas and a major city in the American South, Dallas is the main core of the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States that lacks any navigable link to the sea.

Larry Martin Hagman (born September 21, 1931) is an American film and television actor, producer and director most widely known for playing J.R. Ewing in the 1980s primetime television soap opera Dallas and Major Anthony "Tony" Nelson in the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. He is also the son of actress Mary Martin.

Hagman was born in Fort Worth, Texas. His mother, Mary Martin, later became a Broadway actress and his father, Benjamin Jack Hagman, was a district attorney. His parents divorced in 1936 when he was five years old. He lived with his grandmother in Texas and California. His famous mother became a contract player with Paramount in 1938 and occasionally took him to her movies.

In 1940 his mother met and married Richard Halliday and gave birth to a daughter, Heller, the following year.^{[citation needed]} Hagman attended the strict Black-Foxe Military Institute (now closed). When his mother moved to New York City to continue her Broadway career, Hagman again lived with his grandmother in California.^{[citation needed]} A couple of years later, his grandmother died and Hagman joined his mother in New York. At age 14 (in 1945) while attending boarding school, he began drinking heavily which led to serious health problems later in life.^{[citation needed]}