Lewiston, Maine - City and Town Halls on Waymarking.com

View waymark gallery

Lewiston, Maine

in City and Town Halls

Posted by:  T0SHEA

19T E 402730 N 4883147

Large and impressive, the Lewiston City Hall is a building that a great many cities would be proud to call their own.

When the city of Lewiston lost its city hall to a fire in 1890, it quickly got to work on a new building, one which they felt would be suited to its stature as an important industrial and manufacturing centre. Lewiston had, by the 1890s, become the seventh largest manufacturing centre in New England and the city was desirous of a city hall commensurate with its standing in the economic world. In truth, Lewiston had just lost an even grander building in the 1890 fire. "L" shaped in plan, the original city hall was 165 by 180 feet with a spire rising 200 feet above ground level. The building had 80 rooms and included the police department and prison in the basement with the library and post office on the main floor, while its main gallery could seat 2,272.

Nonetheless, we suspect that the City of Lewiston was not disappointed with its new municipal building, designed by Boston architect, John Calvin Spofford. The cornerstone for the building was laid on October 1, 1890 and the building's dedication took place a little over a year and a half later, on May 19, 1892. Standing the equivalent of five stories in height, the ground floor of the impressive Baroque Revival building is clad in granite, while the upper floors are finished in brick with red stone trim.

Above the main entrance is a massive bell tower with clock faces in each side and a copper domed steeple which rises another five stories above the building proper to a total height of 185 feet.

The Lewiston City Building is fashioned in the Baroque Revival Style. The structure rises to a height equivalent to five stories at the cornice level. A low hipped roof covers the rectangular edifice, which measures 165 feet by 84 feet. A massive tower extends the building to twice its height on the façade. The stone of the foundation continues up the sides of the first floor in a rusticated manner. The rest of the building is constructed of brick.

This impressive Baroque Revival structure replaced Lewiston's Old City Hall which burned in a fire in January of 1890. The building had only been standing for thirty years and its destruction was a great loss to the city. The architectural firm of Brigham and Spofford from Boston was chosen to design a new City Hall. On October 1, 1890, the cornerstone was laid and almost two years later, on May 19, 1892, the completed building was dedicated. It stands on the site of the previous hall in downtown Lewiston. The cost to the city was $180,000.

There was much criticism voiced when the Boston firm was named. Many citizens thought George M. Coombs, a Lewiston architect, did not have a fair opportunity for the commission. They also felt the building would cost too much money. The final result, however, was a City Hall of unusual distinction, bespeaking the aspirations of this thriving manufacturing city.

Beginning with the formation of the Lewiston Water Power Company in 1845, Lewiston, which became a city in 1862, rapidly expanded as an industrial center. A lightly settled rural area fifty years before, the city by 1892 had become a densely populated textile manufacturing complex, the seventh largest in New England. While this startling growth had already led to overcrowded and shabbily built mill workers housing which was long to remain a blight upon the city, there was also great prosperity in some quarters and a strong civic pride in what had so far been achieved.

The Lewiston City Hall, one of the most dramatic and impressive municipal structures in Maine, eloquently bespeaks the vitality and ambition which pervaded the young metropolis at the turn of the century.
From the NRHP Nomination Form