Millville, New Jersey

In 1882, when R. Pearsoll Smith was at the head of Whitall Tatum & Co., he donated $5,000 and loaned another $12,000 to create the Working Men’s Institute, a club where factory workers, it was hoped, would spend their off hours rather than in the temptations of saloons. The red brick building with a central clock tower could handle 300 people in its club room and offered a reading room, gymnasium and classrooms. The auditorium could seat 500 for lectures and stage plays.

In 1926 the building became Millville’s City Hall and performed that duty until 1970 when the government moved into its new digs on the site and the police department set up in the old Institute. The three-story mural on the north wall facing Main Street is a remembrance Of the Millville Army Air Field, “America’s First Defense Airport.” It opened in January 1943 as a gunnery school for fighter pilots and operated for three years.