civic center
Americannoun
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a building complex housing a theater or theaters for the performing arts and sometimes exhibition halls, a museum, etc., and usually constructed or maintained by municipal funds.
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a building or building complex containing a municipality's administrative offices, various departmental headquarters, courts, etc., and sometimes an auditorium, libraries, or other community or cultural facilities.
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a theater, meeting hall, or the like for community or public use.
Etymology
Origin of civic center
First recorded in 1905–10
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Artworks by Dara Birnbaum and Elaine Sturtevant flank the building’s entrance, honoring the theater’s origins as a women’s civic center.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2026
When the olive green charter bus pulled into the suburban civic center in a conservative area east of Cincinnati just after 9 p.m. on Friday, the women were ready.
From Salon ● Nov. 29, 2025
Stout met Kirk for the first time in 2014 when he was speaking to a group of young Texas conservatives huddled in a small room of a civic center in Harris County.
From Slate ● Sep. 23, 2025
“Not that it is just a financial center and a civic center and an economic center, but it’s also a neighborhood.”
From Seattle Times ● May 22, 2024
When the bond issue to renovate the dilapidated civic center failed not once but twice he could not help but wonder if there could ever be any real progress in a place like that.
From "Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream" by H.G. Bissinger
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
