In September 1930, a modern new building on Pleasant Street opened for business as Cynthiana’s new city hall. Designed by the Lexington firm of Churchill & Gillig,* the “modern” two-story brick building presents a restrained facade. A loggia extends across the ground floor and elements of the Craftsman Commercial style are evident along the cornice. Only slight embellishments adorn the exterior: touches of limestone trim at the wide openings along the stepped parapet, and oval medallions at either end of the facade.
The facade of the municipal building, 2023.
The $50,000 building, still standing and in use, owes its existence to the Cynthiana Business Men’s Club, whose members urged the Cynthiana Board of Commissioners to hold an election to vote on a bond issue to construct the building. The bond issue “carried by a fair majority” and the process of rebuilding commenced.
Section of the 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing the dwellings demolished to make way for the new municipal buildings – what look like brick rowhouses, perhaps.
The cornerstone was laid for the building in November 1929, and a copper box “containing interesting data” was sealed in stone by the mayor and other city officials.
Contents of the box placed under the cornerstone. From the November 21, 1929 edition of The Cynthiana Democrat.
While the building may not look imposing from the front by today’s standards (especially when one considers the appallingly out-of-scale buildings constructed as judicial centers in Kentucky county seat towns), the roles it fulfilled are amazing. City hall, police station, fire department, jail, an auditorium with a stage that could seat 600, city offices, and a library – I can see why the local newspaper extolled the building was “one of the finest small city halls in the state.”
A view of the building when it opened in 1930, from The Cynthiana Democrat.
I failed to get a photograph of the side elevation of the building when I was last in Cynthiana, but the length of the structure is impressive, with the round roofed auditorium extending to Kehoe Alley. Maybe when I return I’ll be lucky enough to go inside, and see the commissioners’ chamber on the second floor, “one of the most artistic rooms of the building.”
*Howard Armistead Churchill and John Gillig of Lexington, Kentucky.
In the 1950s as a child, I spent a lot of time in the library when Mrs. Bergan was librarian.