Springfield, Massachusetts

On the afternoon of  January 6, 1905 fire was discovered in the large brick City Hall that had served Springfield since 1856. Five minutes later flamed burst from all parts of the building. In twenty minutes the roof fell in and in an hour nothing was standing except the walls and tower. According to reports, the fire was set by a pet monkey escaping from its cage and overturning a kerosene lamp in pursuit of food from an exhibition in progress in the hall. The people in the building all escaped but the monkey lost its life in the conflagration. Also lost were all the assessors’ records in the city; the monetary loss of $100,000 was uninsured.

Ambitious plans were laid for the city’s second city hall. The grand municipal complex was to consist of two temple-like Greek Revival buildings flanking a 300-foot high Italianate Campanile clocktower. Completed in 1913, former President William Howard Taft officiated the opening ceremonies. Due to a height restriction in Springfield, the Campanile, with a carillon of twelve bells, remained the tallest structure in the city until 1973.

Albany, New York

Henry Hobson Richardson, America’s most influential architect of the late 1800s, went straight into his playbook for this municipal building in 1881 that replaced the previous city hall, designed by Philip Hooker in 1829, that had burned down. Richardson’s City Hall features many of his trademark Romanesque design elements: contrasting light and dark rough-cut stone; multiple arches, often in sets of three; groups of truncated pillars, decorative gables and a tower. In an 1885 listing of the Ten Most Beautiful Building in America by American Architect magazine, the Albany City Hall was on the honor roll. In 1927 the pyramidal-roofed tower was outfitted with the first municipal carillon in the United States, equipped with 60 bells. The largest weighs 11,200 pounds.

Johnstown, Pennsylvania

Joseph Johns set aside space on all four corners of this intersection for “parklets.” Three remain and only the corner containing City Hall is occupied. Constructed in 1900 to replace an earlier building on this site, the new City Hall held special significance for the community. Here one of the flood’s most beneficial changes to the town took place - the consolidation of many of the valley’s small boroughs into the City of Johnstown. Before the flood, each borough guarded its governing rights but rebuilding together made more sense and so consolidation was voted in on November 6, 1889.

The city fathers wanted to be sure that the new City Hall, constructed in 1900 to replace an earlier municipal building on the site, symbolized what they believed was the modern, progressive nature of Johnstown. To that end, Charles Robinson of Altoona designed a Richardsonian Romanesque structure, which at the time was the style of choice in America for monumental civic buildings. Walter Myton served as project architect; he designed at least forty residences in the area, along with
as many churches, schools, and stores.

A square wooden cupola, rising out of the western end of the roof, contains miniature features found in the larger building, such as false arches with voussoirs and small arched balconies.  It also has clock faces on all four sides. Note also the markers on the wall of City Hall, showing high water lines during Johnstown’s three worst floods. Flood control measures were taken after the 1936 disaster, yet in 1977, a “once in 500 years” storm caused a flood resulting in 85 deaths and $200 million in damage.

For decades, one of the residents of the parklets around Market and Main streets was Morley’s dog, a statue ]made in the late 1800s by J.W. Fiske Iron Works, a New York City-based maker and retailer of ornamental iron and zinc products. Cambria Iron executive James Morley bought the statue and placed it in his lawn at Main and Walnut, where it stood until being washed away by the floodwaters in the great flood of May 31, 1889. Recovered in the debris pile at the stone bridge, it was returned to Morley. The Morley family kept the statue at various residences throughout the city, including a house on Palliser Street in Southmont. In the 1940s, the statue was donated to the city, and became a beloved icon. It has since been removed in anticipation of needed restoration.

Over time people came to believe that Morley was a dog that saved a child during the great flood. There was such a dog, a Newfoundland named Romey who saved three people, but Morley’s Dog has nothing to do with that incident. This misconception was spread further by a reference in the 1977 Paul Newman movie Slap Shot.

Bristol, Rhode Island

It is probably safe to assume no one born in Indiana ever had as much impact on Rhode Island as Ambrose Burnside. command of Fort Adams in Newport brought Burnside to the Ocean State in 1852 where he found a wife and a permanent reputation as the inventor of a famous rifle that bore his name - the Burnside carbine. That reputation propelled a Civil War career that led Abraham Lincoln to offer him command of the Union Army. Major General Burnside turned him down believing, correctly, that he lacked the appropriate experience.

After the war ended Burnside was immediately elected to three one-year terms as Governor of Rhode Island and then mixed a successful business career with his political ambitions. At its inception in 1871, the National Rifle Association chose him as its first president. In 1874 he was elected to the United States Senate and was serving a second term when he died of a heart attack in Bristol in 1881 at the age of 57.

The erection of this memorial, now serving use as a town building, was quite a big deal in 1883 when it was planned. A crowd of some 5,000 overwhelmed the streets of Bristol to hear President Chester A. Arthur speak at the laying of the cornerstone. The building itself was designed by Stephen C. Earle of Worcester, Massachusetts and displays many of the hallmarks of the Richardsonian Romanesque style including prominent arches, multi-chromatic materials and pillar groups. Long completely clad in ivy, an award-winning restoration revealed the design details and red mortar between the stones. To the side and rear is the Bristol War Veterans Honor Roll Garden.

Frederick, Maryland

This Victorian style building, constructed in 1862, has been described as “one of the prettiest courthouse squares in America.” In 1765, Frederick citizens assembled in the courtyard and burned effigies of government officials in demonstration of the Stamp Act. This is considered to be the first public uprising against the monarchist rule, occurring several years before the Boston tea party. Busts of Maryland’s first governor Thomas Johnson and Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney are displayed in the courtyard.

This building replaced the original courthouse on the site that burned on May 8, 1861, with the bell in the cupola eerily tolling its own death knell as the roof began to collapse. Brick and iron fortify the present structure, a model of fireproof construction when it was completed in 1862. In 1986 the city government moved into the old courthouse.

Scranton, Pennsylvania

When Lackawanna County was formed in 1878, the city block that now houses the Lackawanna County Courthouse was known as “Lily Pond” or Tamarack Bog.” The property was a dump for ashes and cinders and was used for skating in the winter. In 1879, the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company and the Susquehanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad and Coal Company donate the land as site for public buildings and a park.

Isaac Perry of Binghamton, New York was awarded the commission for the new county courthouse. Perry’s design called for a Victorian Chateau-style built in the warm tones of the city’s native west mountain stone, trimmed in Onondaga limestone. Construction was complete in 1884. In 1896, local architect B. Taylor Lacey designed the building’s third floor, adding eclectic stylistic influences such as a steeply pitched hipped tile roof, wall dormers with scrolled Flemish parapets topped by broken pediments and urns, a dentillated cornice and pyramidal-roofed towers.

The Lackawanna County Courthouse gained national attention in 1902 for its role as the meeting site for the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission’s sessions in Scranton. The Commission - appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt - met in the Superior Courtroom to hear testimony in America’s first non-violent federal intervention between labor and ownership. John Mitchell spoke on behalf of the mine workers and famed attorney Clarence Darrow represented management.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Courthouse received a re-design of the clock tower in 1929 and a two-story rectangular wing in 1964.

Baltimore, Maryland

Situated on a city block bounded by Lexington Street on the North, Guilford Avenue on the
West, Fayette Street on the South and War Memorial Plaza to the East, the six-story structure was
designed by precocious 22-year old architect George A. Frederick in the Second Empire style with
prominent Mansard roofs and richly-framed dormers. Two floors of a repeating Serlian window
motif lord over an urbanely rusticated basement. Dedicated on October 25, 1875, it is an early
example of French Renaissance Revival construction in America. In 1975, City Hall was completely
restored to its former glory including the dome and formal hearing rooms.

Georgetown, South Carolina

The Georgetown County Courthouse courthouse, designed by prominent architect and South Carolina native Robert Mills, was built in 1823–24 to replace a courthouse which had been battered by two hurricanes. Mills himself, who also designed the Washington Monument, called this courthouse “a great ornament to the town.” A modern Mills scholar has described it as “the most sophisticated of his South Carolina courthouses.” An initial appropriation of $12,000 was approved for the new courthouse. This Mills design is an excellent example of the Classical Revival style so widely used in American public architecture during much of the nineteenth century.

Smyrna, Delaware

With its Italianate, Second Empire architecture, mansard roof, and brick exterior, the Smyrna Opera House is an outstanding example of the Second Floor Opera House, so popular in the second half of the 19th century and virtually non-existent in today’s communities. In the 1870s nearly every community had such a structure. Today there are perhaps half a dozen restored examples in the United States, and the Smyrna Opera House is the only one in Delaware. 

The Opera House rose in 1870 to literally become the center of Smyrna and Clayton life, hosting community events from high school graduations to cotillions, parties and turkey suppers. Formally known as The Old Town Hall, it has housed a theatre, Town offices, police and fire stations, a public library, a movie house called the Roxy, a lodge hall and even a jail. The barred windows of the jail are still visible.  

Among those who appeared at the Opera House were noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass; suffragettes Grace Greenwood, Lucy Stone, and Olive Logan; entertainers General Tom Thumb and Ada Gilman; musicians Frank Corbett and his Boston All-Star Orchestra and the Amphion Male Quartette; and, William Jennings Bryan, who spoke here while campaigning for president in 1900.  

The Opera House seen today is a restoration of the original. On Christmas night 1948 a fire swept through a block of downtown Smyrna, consuming the third floor and bell tower. Rather than raze the entire building it was decided to roof over the remnants. For a half-century the wounded hulk was little more than storage space. But in 2003 a $3.6 million recreation project brought the Opera House back to its 1887 appearance.  

The Town government offices moved out of the fire-compromised Opera House into this Colonial Revival building in 1976.

Madison, New Jersey

Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Jr.’s mother was Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller, daughter of William Rockefeller, co-founder of Standard Oil with John D. His father was the chairman of the board of the Remington Arms company. After graduating from Princeton in 1930 Dodge began indulging his passion for aviation, a pastime his mother found too dangerous and she sent him to France as a diversion. While there Dodge was instantly killed in an automobile accident when his roadster struck a tree. The grief-stricken parents built memorials to their son on the Princeton and Columbia campuses and spent $800,000 to fund the construction of this Georgian Revival showcase of imported marble and Maine granite. The Hartley Dodge Memorial Building is used as town offices.

Sumter, South Carolina

After the destruction by fire of an earlier Opera House (built in 1872) in December 1892, this scrumptious Richardsonian-Romanesque replacement rendered in Cumberland Bluff stone was built from 1893-1895. The 100-foot clock tower has been the focal point of downtown Sumter ever since. In 1936 the Opera House was renovated into a movie theater to the tune of $120,000.  The very first film shown at the Opera House was Earthworm Tractors; tickets to the first movie were 35 cents for adults and 10 cents for children. In 1982, after several interior renovations, none to the better, the Opera House closed its door after 46 years of operation as a movie theater.

The City of Sumter, in need of additional office space and hoping to attract more visitors to the downtown area, purchased the building in 1984 and began a painstaking restoration of the Opera House. The Opera House still houses City Hall and many of the City’s departments and offices, including City Council’s chambers. The first floor auditorium is once again an entertainment showcase.

Charleston, South Carolina

This site was originally set aside as a public market within the Civic Square of the Grand Modell, the 17th-century plan of the city. A beef market stood here from 1739 until it was destroyed by fire in 1796. This central intersection is now called “Four Corners of the Law,” as the four buildings surrounding it reflect four arms of law--ecclesiastical, state, federal and City Hall’s municipal law.

Charleston’s City Hall building was constructed between 1800 and 1804 in the Adamesque style by Charlestonian Gabriel Manigault. City Hall’s semi-circular projection on the north side and round basement windows are characteristic features of Manigault. The white marble trim is believed to have originated in Italy before it was cut in Philadelphia. The original red brick walls offered a striking contrast to this marble trim before the walls were covered with stucco in 1882.

Anderson, South Carolina

The second Anderson County Courthouse was constructed in 1898 on the site of the original 1820 courthouse. Features of this three-story building include curvilinear gables, decorative brick work, a central clock tower, arched windows with stone sills, a raised basement, and tile roof. The building originally had a large turret and balcony, which were removed when the building was remodeled in 1939. The clock face and bell in the tower are the same ones used in the original 1820 Courthouse. The bell, dated 1856, was presented to Anderson County by the City of Anderson and was first rung by Judge J.P. Reed.

New Haven, Connecticut

Henry Austin was a carpenter’s apprentice who began his career in architecture working for Ithiel Town, one of the first generation of professional architects in the United States. Beginning in 1836 Austin practiced more than 50 years in and around New Haven, working in a variety of popular 19th century styles. For the New Haven City Hall he added one of America’s first High Victorian Gothic buildings in 1861 with bands of sandstone and limestone. A much-needed restoration was undertaken in 1976 and has been maintained ever since.

Hope, New Jersey

This beautiful stone building was constructed in 1781 as the spiritual core of the Moravian community. It took 19 months to build the 3 1/2 story combination church and activity center. Religious services were convened in a large second floor room 30 feet square and their was space set aside for both boys and girls schools and dormitories. The minister’s quarters were also in the Gemeinhaus. After the Moravians sold their property and returned to Bethlehem in 1808 the building did duty as the Warren County Courthouse and had a long tenure as an inn servicing the stage coaches traveling between the Delaware River and the Hudson River. The family that operated the Union Inn from 1840 to 1853 was also around to help found the First Hope Bank in 1911, which has owned the building for the last century. The bank, still in the same family, has been careful caretakers of the Gemeinhaus, completing a meticulous restoration of the exterior, including the bell tower on the roof, in 1993.