This restrained Moderne building visually inaugurates the axis of Austin Street, the main east–west thoroughfare of Waco. Spicer's design for a building to replace a much earlier city hall by Glenn Allen and Samuel Herbert diminished the importance of the city hall's relationship to the river behind it and to the county courthouse to the west. Unfortunately, the tornado of 1953 and urban renewal that followed removed significant buildings on blocks surrounding the city hall, leaving it isolated at the extreme end of the central business district. The building's presence above the banks of the Brazos River is now totally obscured by the recent convention center.