Description of Historic Place

St. Thomas City Hall is an elaborate, two-and-a-half storey, stone building with a commanding clock tower. It was built at the end of the 19th century in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. The hall is prominently located on the main street of downtown St. Thomas on a generous setback. The formal recognition consists of the building on its legal property.

Heritage Value

St. Thomas City Hall was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1984 because:
- it illustrates the emergence of urban areas in a predominantly rural and agricultural 19th-century Canada;
- it reflects the growth of municipal governments; and
- it is an impressively sited, well-designed example of a late Victorian civic building and one of the few relatively unaltered Richardsonian Romanesque Town Halls surviving in Canada.

St. Thomas City Hall is a representative example of the large, strictly administrative city halls which began to appear across Canada in the 1880s and 1890s. The construction of such a city hall reflected the tremendous growth of the city in the last quarter of the 19th century, a direct result of improved railway service. Designed primarily to house the city’s administrative services, this building’s monumental scale and prominent location reflected both the increased size of municipal government, and the community’s civic pride and ambition. The city’s expectation of continued progress was typical of communities whose prosperity was fuelled by railway facilities.

The exterior form and interior arrangement of St. Thomas City Hall are typical of large, administrative city halls built in medium-size cities during the late 19th century. By the end of the century, urban town halls had evolved from multipurpose buildings, to large-scale, single-function, purpose-built buildings which accommodated only the administrative and legislative functions of municipal government. The construction of large-scale, single-purpose buildings reflected both the growth of urban areas and the expansion of municipal responsibility for local services.

The Richardsonian Romanesque style was used extensively for public buildings in Canada during the late 1880s and 1890s. Designed by local architect Neil Darrach, the St. Thomas City Hall is a restrained representative of the style in its massive scale and quality, its rusticated stonework, prominent clock tower, steep pavilion roofs, and round-arched openings. The elaborate interior, with its vaulted, two-storey council chamber, was in keeping with the style of the exterior.

Source: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, November 1984.

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements which relate to the heritage value of the St. Thomas City Hall include:
- its monumental scale;
- features typical of large, administrative city halls of the late 19th century, including its Richardsonian Romanesque style, prominent clock tower, division into quadrants, and elaborate interior detailing;
- features associated with its Richardsonian Romanesque style, including the use of heavy-cut sandstone for foundations and entrances, the projecting arched entrances, the arcaded round-arched windows, the steep rooflines, and elaborately carved stone detailing;
- the division of the building into quadrants, reflected on the exterior in the use of projecting hip-roofed corner pavilions and on the interior by wide, intersecting corridors;
- the prominent, asymmetrically placed, clock tower, surmounted by a spire;
- the projecting entrances on the two street elevations, each with round-arched openings, ornate balconies and elaborate, carved detailing;
- the arcaded groupings of round-headed window openings at the second storey and on the tower, and flat-headed openings at the first storey, joined by pilasters;
- exterior detailing which emphasizes the vertical and horizontal divisions of the building, including pilasters spanning two storeys, a bold modillion cornice at the roofline, and string courses of sandstone and terra cotta;
- its elaborate, massively scaled, carved-stone detailing, including corner turrets, pedimented gables, foliated motifs at the two street entrances, and a tower panel showing the name and construction date of the building;
- the use of high-quality materials, including brick walls, sandstone foundation, stone and terra cotta detailing, and slate roof;
- surviving remnants of the original interior layout, including the division of each floor into quadrants by wide, intersecting corridors and the room partitioning within those quadrants;
- surviving remnants of the original council chamber, including its large scale, vaulted ceiling, and third floor visitors gallery;
- surviving original interior finishes and detailing in the council chamber, corridors and office areas, in some cases extant behind modern finishes, including oak panelling and wainscoting, decorative plaster ceilings, elaborate wood and plaster carving, ornate window and door trim, panelled and glazed doors, baseboards, and wooden railing;
- art-glass skylight panels, originally located in the council chamber and the entrance to the third floor gallery;
- detailing in the reading room, including an iron column with fluted capital, supporting a massive chamfered beam;
- its relationship to its site, including its prominent location on a corner lot;
- viewscapes of the building from the downtown area, including its prominent clocktower.