£22,000), but Atak's contract was for a sum of £41,835, a cost increase caused by rising prices of labour and materials. The total cost, after all structural and decoration contracts, is estimated to be around £125,000 (about £ million in ) – and the council had to find extra funding at a time when there was great poverty among Leeds's working classes. Design revisions There were many design revisions during the construction, such as the inclusion of an organ, which came to be regarded as the crowning glory; town halls elsewhere followed suit. Another example is the ventilation turrets (now considered part of its character but which caused alarm when they first appeared) and the vases on the roof parapet, which Brodrick only requested the extra money for from the council after trial ornaments had been ordered. Brodrick never shied from asking for additional sums to perfect his building, so was fortunate for there to be a council majority for building to the highest standards. The most controversial modification was the inclusion of the tower. A precedent existed for them on public buildings at Liverpool Town Hall and the Royal Exchange, London. A design of a tower by Brodrick, to cost £6,000, was rejected in February 1853, but it was debated at great length and the proposal resurfaced in September 1854 with a cost limitation of £7,000, but this was again defeated by the Council. Opponents of the tower used the argument that "a tower would cost money and would only be good to look at, not to use". Proponents, led again by Dr John Deakin Heaton, wrote about the Continental associations of a grand and impressive town hall. He hoped that visitors would come to Leeds to see the Town Hall, and that a tower, at a few additional thousand pounds, would provide the building with beauty beyond "mere utilitarianism". The following February, a compromise was reached when the Council voted to allow "a form of roof construction which might eventually permit the erection of a tower if at any time it should be thought desirable to do so". It was not until March 1856 that a tower (for £5,500) was formally approved by a majority of nineteen. It would take the form of a cupola supported on columns akin to the Corinthian columns of the south facade. It is likely that Brodrick designed a tower before building even