38 South 3rd Avenue
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
Current building.
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
This is the third
municipal building that Sturgeon Bay has had. The first Village Hall was
destroyed by fire in 1880, the first City Hall was displaced when the
"new" library was being constructed in 1910. In 1935, an addition or
annex (30-36 S. Third) was constructed. Originally a stable and a "lock
up" were located at the rear and a hose drying tower of wood construction
was at the northwest corner. In 1919, the fire-fighting operation boasted of
"three paid men and four horses.” The building is designed in a local
interpretation of the Classical Revival style and is built of grey, local
limestone. The design of this building is in imitation of a Roman temple with
an implied central pavilion with a pediment fashioned of blocks of limestone
and supported by three carved Ionic pilasters (Bedford limestone) all above a
new and enlarged garage type door. The first story is of alternating width
courses of grey, local limestone laid as rusticated ashlar. The upper story is
of regularly coursed, rock-faced ashlar. A one-story addition to the north,
also of local limestone, was built in 1935. The City Hall is of architectural
significance as the most "classically" detailed of the local
limestone buildings located within the District.1