Known as the "folly at Broad and Market", City Hall was reviled when it was finally completed 40 years after its construction began. It was referred to as "the monstrous inchoate municipal palace at Broad and Market streets", and as ""The Marble Elephant". The Times once said "It would be a publicservice to blow [the entire building] into fragments with dynamite".

The Hale building, designed by Willis G. Hale (the architect behind the design of the Design Lorraine), is a prime example of a "more is more" design philosophy. Not everyone hates it, but those who do really do hate it. Reviewers called it "“Crude…violent…revolting…ignorant…higgledy-piggledy,” and "Absurd…irrational, incongruent and ridiculous…". Of course, the conversion of the first floor to a now defunct Valu-Plus didn't help.

The new Home2Suites Hotel at 12th and Arch has been widely panned. Hidden City's Nathaniel Popkin said, "the hotel was painfully ugly–an architectural dunghill on what might have been a transformative corner", and Inga Saffron compared it unfavorably to a parking garage.

Symphony House, a South Broad condo building by developer Carl Dranoff, was completed in 2007. Inga Saffron referred to it as ""a Frankenstein mix of historical elements", "a clumsy, contemporary fake", "decorated with the padded-shoulder pomposity of the Reagan era", and "like a sequined and over-rouged strumpet"

Where to begin? Though there are a select few who find the Roundhouse stunning, others, like Philaphilia blogger GroJlart are less fond: "A Police Headquarters that looks like handcuffs. What a fucking joke." It's true that Brutalist architecture (of which The Roundhouse is an excellent example) can be a divisive style. Preservationists and fans of the building say that lots of buildings get demolished a generation after their time, and that people just don't appreciate the Roundhouse yet. There's even a facebook campaign to save it.

The interior is, by all reports, breathtaking, if a bit stodgy. The exterior, however, provides a stark contrast to the lovely Rittenhouse Square. This building was built to provide great views of the park below. Unfortunately, it provides horrible views from the park below.