Like larger cities across Virginia in the postwar period, Portsmouth erected a new civic center both to cope with an expanding municipal bureaucracy and to assert its aspirations to modernity. Semi-Brutalist design in brick and precast concrete unites the various elements of the Civic Center, including two courthouses, the jail, and the police headquarters. The nearby International Style City Hall (1977–1980, Thomas F. Marshall; 801 Crawford Street) was privately financed and leased to the city, an unusual arrangement at the time that has since become commonplace.