100 years
|
The Monroe Historical Society treated Old City Hall to a
small birthday party with an open house held in December.
Attending guests included the Mayor and many present and former Police
and Firemen from the City of Monroe. All enjoyed a tour of the
modern day structure and the museum and enjoyed loads of conversation
and memories while partaking in cake and coffee.
The history of the building as written by Nellie
Robertson appears below.
In March 1908, five years
after Monroe's incorporation Mayor Ben L. Monck proposed building a
city hall to be paid for by increasing the saloon license fee by $200 a
year. Two months later in a marathon meeting, the council ordered
the building of a two-story city hall at 207 East Main Street.
It was designed by architects Kennedy and Baker of Everett
and was to have a brick facade in an English design. On May 27, 1908, the bid for construction was awarded to JJ Cretney, R.E. McKinnie, A.H. Lemon, and D.F. Stephens for $5,769.65 with work to commence immediately. The building was finished and paid for in November at a total cost of just over $7,000 after some changes were made in the building design.
The new Monroe City Hall was fifty feet wide and sisty feet deep with a center stairway. On the ground floor; it had a 17 x 20 foot police court, a two-bunk jail cell, offices, and a 25 x 60 foot fire hall on the west side with a 56 foot bell tower with ropes and pulleys for suspending the fire hoses for drying.
Upstairs, the council chamber across the back of the building was 28 x 50 feet with an 8 x 16 foot raised platform and a back row of glass windows. The library in the southesast corner was 21 x 24 feet with a 7 x 15 foot alcove at the back. It has a high panel settee containing lockers for dishes for receptions under the windows across the front. A 14 foot reading table was installed with a smaller six-foot table in the alcove for the librarian. The 21 x 24-foot room in the southwest corner was intended as a rest room accommodation for farmers' wives while in town.
Over time changes were made. In the 1950's the fire hall expanded into a new concrete-block annex to the west and then moved out entirely to thenew fire hall in the 1990's. The Monroe Library first exchanged places with the council chambers, then moved out entirely in 1967. Evergreen District Court took over the library space until its new courthouse wsa built near the Evergreen State Fairgrounds.
City of Monroe offices, council chambers and the Police Department moved to the new Monroe City Hall on West Main Street in the early 1970's. In 1982, the Monroe Historical Society opened its museum in the building. In the 1990's the society purchased the building from the City of Monroe. In 2005, Fred Rosenzweig left the Society $100,000 inhis will specifically to pay off the mortgage. It was Fred's desire to see Old City Hall renovated and maintained as the historical center of Monroe. Now the museum occupies the old fire hall portion of the building on the ground floor. A bronze plaque is mounted on the buiilding in Fred's honor.
history written by:
Nellie Robertson
410 Capitol Way N. #417
Olympia, WA 98501