and is the subject of a protected view in local planning policy, ensuring no new tall buildings will block the long-range views of it across the western side of the city centre. Leeds Town Hall has been used as a model for civic buildings across Britain and the British Empire, being one of the largest and earliest. In particular, Bolton Town Hall in Greater Manchester (1873) and Portsmouth Guildhall in Hampshire (1890), both works by the Leeds architect and Brodrick student William Hill (1827–1889), take many of their design cues from Leeds Town Hall. Another significant appropriation of its form – the square plan with a neoclassical design and tower – is Parliament House, Melbourne (revised design 1879), as are other colonial examples such as Parliament House, Adelaide (1880s), and in South Africa, Cape Town City Hall (1893) and Durban City Hall (1885). Additionally, many Americans reportedly travelled to Leeds especially to see the Town Hall after its opening, which some venerated as highly as medieval cathedrals. The composition of a building with end pavilions and a dominating central tower was adopted for example at Philadelphia City Hall (John McArthur Jr., 1871–1901), which has struck architectural historians as the ultimate expansion of Brodrick's idea of a domed tower, crowned with a great statue of William Penn, while the first design for the New York State Capitol followed a similar layout and a tower which featured a close resemblance to Leeds Town Hall's. In 1857, prior to opening, the following remarks on Leeds Town Hall were made by two Liverpool architects at a meeting of the Liverpool Architectural and Archaeological Society: About a century after its opening, the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner wrote: "Leeds can be proud of its town hall, one of the most convincing buildings of its date in the country and of the classical buildings of its date no doubt the most successful." Pevsner was more hesitant to praise the tower, writing "the architect has not quite made up his mind whether he wanted a dome like those of the Greenwich Hospital or a tower". In a never-broadcast 1960s BBC film about the changing architecture of Leeds, the poet John Betjeman, known for his love of Victorian architecture, praised the town hall. A 2007 BBC programme presented by Jonathan Meades profiled Cuthbert Brodrick and appraised the architecture of Leeds Town Hall. Meades said In November 2008, Leeds Town