 Cass Gilbert, who had moved to Ridgefield a few years earlier, won a competition to design City Hall as the first of a complex of buildings that would highlight the public and private heights of the city.He may have been the favorite because the members of the city's building commission had apparently been impressed by his Ives Memorial Library, the main building of the New Haven Free Public Library.It is not certain whether Gilbert was the Chases' first choice for the project.