When Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced last week that the time has come for a new City Hall elsewhere in Boston, David Scondras had a déjà vu moment.

“I laughed when I heard it,” said Scondras, a former Boston City Councilor who was the first to suggest in 1988 that the concrete and brick fortress be sold to finance a new, more efficient building. “Tommy and I are old friends and City Hall has been recycling my ideas for years.”

Boston’s 37-year-old City Hall has been a controversial piece of architecture since it opened in 1969. Gerhard M. Kallmann, Noel M. McKinnell and Edward F. Knowles, three Columbia University professors, won a nationwide contest in 1962 to design the building. At the time, John F. Kennedy was in the White House and City Hall was the centerpeice of an urban renewal project that replaced Scollay Square – a colorful district filled with taverns, vaudeville and burlesque theaters.

The city secured more than $40 million in federal funds to raze fading nightspots like the Old Howard and replace them with a collection of city, state, federal and private office buildings.

Much has been made of the building’s design, an example of Brutalism, an architectural style that was born from the modernist architectural movement from 1950-1970. The formula was largely inspired by the work of Swiss architect Le Corbusier and German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The term originates from the French béton brut, or “raw concrete.”

Brutalist buildings were typically formed with striking repetitive angular geometries, often revealing the textures of the wooden forms used to shape the material, which is normally poured concrete.

For a while, City Hall basked in the glow of universal praise – from architects, at least. In 1976, the American Institute of Architects asked four dozen architects, critics and historians to nominate what they considered to be the profession’s proudest achievements of the nation’s first 200 years. Boston City Hall finished in the top 10, preceded by: the University of Virginia’s Jeffersonian campus designed by Thomas Jefferson; New York’s Rockefeller Center; Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va.; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in Bear Run, Penn.; Carson Pirie Scott & Co., a Chicago department store; the Seagram Building in New York City; and Philadelphia’s Saving Fund Society Building.

While architects applauded the building, city employees and residents who tried to navigate it complained. They said it was a dark and unfriendly eyesore with interior spaces that resulted in cavernous voids, a confusing floorplan and a drafty building.

But not everyone favored taking a wrecking ball to the facility. Following Scondras’ plea to sell the property, a Boston Globe editorial called the suggestion “a delightfully bad idea – delightful because it gives us a chance to ponder the origins of that intriguing building, and bad because it ignores the reason why the design of City Hall was originally applauded.”

Robert Campbell, the Globe’s architecture critic, wrote, “with all its drawbacks City Hall remains a memorable and powerful image and it works adequately inside.” He insisted that, like the nearby Faneuil Hall, City Hall should be treated with pride. Campbell suggested colorful decorations for Christmas, new furniture and a good scrubbing.

Today, Scondras, a Cambridge resident, said he has always liked the building’s exterior but insists that the interior has never worked. “There are giant staircases that lead to nowhere and visitors are always getting lost,” said Scondras last week. “It feels like you’re visiting a pharaoh in a pyramid. There should be a law that makes architects work in buildings they build. Boston should sell the citadel and build a people-friendly building in a more central part of the city.”

Scondras, who held a series of public hearings on how the building could be improved, invited the architects to shed some light on enhancing the 550,000-square-foot structure. The former councilor said he learned from one of the architects that the building was never completed.

“Almost everyone agreed the building was dysfunctional internally, even the original architect,” recalled Scondras last week. “The original design called for a restaurant or a pub at the lower level, terraces around the hall’s perimeter should have hanging plants, the interior and exterior concrete should be washed and polished regularly, more signs should be installed to direct visitors and red carpeting should be installed in the City Council chambers.”

The plaza surrounding the building, comprised of red brick, also has been criticized as a cold space without enough trees or grass. But the designers pointed out the fact that the MBTA has several rail lines running underneath it, making the maintenance of green space nearly impossible.

In remarks to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce earlier this month, Menino said he is floating the idea in the hopes that a sale will open up prime real estate for a new building with open space that will “galvanize the vitality of our downtown and strengthen Boston’s future.” The market value for City Hall and City Hall Plaza will bring enough cash to construct a new seat for city government, the mayor said.

It is unclear if Menino’s plan to sell the 9-acre parcel to a private developer who could raze the building and replace it with a hotel or an office building will get off the ground. So far, any potential bidders are not speaking publicly.

Menino wants the new City Hall to be built on city-owned land at a 14-acre site along the waterfront that is currently occupied by the Bank of America Pavilion. The site, while offering dramatic views of Boston’s inner harbor, may not be as accessible as Government Center and the two MBTA lines that run underground.

Still, Menino envisions an “architecturally magnificent structure, as well as wonderful open space along the water’s edge.”

“Look at the milestones of growth on South Boston’s waterfront, where we invested so heavily in planning and infrastructure,” Menino said. “Look at the new Institute of Contemporary Art. My administration designated the land to that project because we saw then what everybody sees now – that it would totally change people’s perceptions of our waterfront. Until 10 years ago, the waterfront was the greatest untapped asset in this city. Today, it is booming and expanding our downtown.”