The road to that controversial roofline started in 1988, when the Fresno City Council awarded a $2.7 million design contract to local architect William Patnaude. Patnaude brought in Arthur Erickson, a Canadian architect who had already won the AIA Gold Medal for his lifetime body of work, which included One California Plaza in Los Angeles and the Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C. Erickson's original design featured a three-story arch in the center of the building and a massive vertical facade. It was elegant. It was also over budget. When preliminary cost estimates came back too high, Erickson went back to the drafting table and emerged with something radically different: a large sloping roof split by two separate peaks, the gap between them admitting natural light into the council chamber through a skylight. The arch had been dramatic but conventional. The peaks were something else entirely.

The public reaction was immediate and creative. The deputy city manager offered an inventory of comparisons the building had inspired: "We've heard it described as anything from Twin Peaks to Madonna's bra to a half-opened tuna can." McMichael's Klingon warship quip became the most quoted, but the range of analogies suggested something important -- people were actually paying attention to a civic building, which is more than most city halls can claim. The local American Institute of Architects chapter president offered a more generous assessment: "I think it is a great building for the city. It does a wonderful thing for architecture because it is so controversial." He had a point. Indifference is the usual fate of government architecture. Fresno got passion instead.

Approach the main entrance and dual stairways rise to meet you, flanking a large fountain in the center. That fountain nearly did not exist. Budget pressures during construction eliminated it from the plans, and the entrance would have been a simpler, drier affair. But the Cobb family -- early settlers of the Fresno area who had built successful businesses in the region -- donated $100,000 to restore the fountain to the project. Other donors followed. The fountain became a small monument to civic generosity, a reminder that the details of public buildings often depend on private citizens who care enough to write a check. Inside, the council chamber seats 249 people beneath that skylight between the peaks. The mayor's office, finance department, public works, and economic resources departments fill the remaining five stories. The building anchors one end of the Mariposa Mall, a twelve-block civic corridor that stretches south to the Fresno County Courthouse.

When the building was completed, workers sealed a time capsule inside one of its walls, marked to be opened thirty years later. In December 2022, Mayor Jerry Dyer and city council members gathered for the unveiling. Out came newspapers from 1992, VHS tapes, cassette tapes, old coins, and -- in a detail that could not have been more perfectly Fresno -- a figurine of The California Raisins, those claymation mascots born of a marketing campaign for the valley's most famous crop. The capsule was a snapshot of a particular moment: analog media, raisin pride, a brand-new city hall that people could not stop arguing about. They refilled the capsule and sealed it again, this time with a date of 2052. Whatever Fresno looks like then, the Klingon warship will still be anchoring the north end of the mall, its twin peaks splitting the valley light.