Old City Hall

OLD CITY HALL, home to Whatcom Museum since 1941, is a beloved city landmark. With its Victorian cupolas and central clock tower a stately community presence for more than a century, the history of the building and its inhabitants (including prisoners!) remains central to the Whatcom Museum’s mission. While our fine art exhibitions have moved to the climate-controlled galleries of the Lightcatcher, Old City Hall is open with one historical exhibition, and remains the site for many of our most popular programs. General visitor hours are Thursday - Sunday 12 - 5 PM.  One admission gets you into Old City Hall and The Lightcatcher!

OLD CITY HALL
The Jan. 16, 1892, issue of the "Daily Reveille" voiced its approval:
"This is a beautiful location, convenient and in full view of the entire city. This location, with this building constructed thereon, would be the first attraction of strangers coming into the city; a beacon to all vessels coming into our harbor, and a sure index to all new comers, tourists and travelers of our taste, thrift, enterprise and intelligence."

More than 100 years ago, the old city hall on Prospect Street started as a dream. Built to symbolize prosperity and progressive thinking during the Bellingham Bay boom days, hopes were that the city would become the West Coast terminal of the Northern Pacific Railroad.

But the dream was shattered as Bellingham Bay went from boom to doom. The railroad never came and before the building was finished, the bay region plunged into depression.

Forty years later the building was declared "outdated" for a modernizing city and the wrecking ball threatened. But just when it seemed the building’s days were over, a desire to preserve Bellingham’s heritage prevailed.

Today, as a landmark building of the Whatcom Museum, the city hall is again a source of pride, part of a lively cultural center in a collection of buildings that feature both permanent and changing exhibitions highlighting art, nature and Pacific regional history.

A GRAND CITY HALL
The recently consolidated City of New Whatcom — formed by the merger of the north bay towns of Whatcom and Sehome — was bursting at the seams during the boom days prior to the depression of 1893.

The newly formed New Whatcom City Council had moved out of the 1858 county courthouse (reputed to be the oldest brick building in the state still standing today) and into a new triangular building called the Oakland Block (also still standing). However, sharing quarters with a clothing emporium, music dealer and hotel wouldn’t do for the government of the "fourth largest city in the state."

Architects were asked to submit plans for a bona fide city hall and in November 1891, the council accepted an impressive Victorian design from local architect Alfred Lee. The new building would be the first grand city hall on the Bellingham Bay shore.

THE CONTROVERSY
The City Council had not originally planned to build the city hall on the sandstone bluff. In fact, the builder had already dug a basement in the vicinity of Cornwall Avenue, where Union Printing stands today. There the city hall was to be accessible from two streets, which explains the building's virtually identical front and rear exteriors.

But the Cornwall site received bitter criticism from at least two council members. One complained the city would not hold absolute title to the property at the location. The other contended that the building would be obscured and blackened by soot from the power station on Whatcom Creek.

The final straw came when a committee investigation of the Cornwall site issued its findings. Among a litany of irregularities, the committee reported that the city would not have clear title to the property and that the site was directly above an old Bellingham Coal Company tunnel.

The council immediately purchased for $5,000 a site overlooking Bellingham Bay that formed a portion of community cofounder Henry Roeder’s original donation claim. Roeder, incidentally, had volunteered the information about the mine tunnel. The final price tag for building and furnishings was $50,000. The insured value of the Museum building and property is now over $7.5 million.

In 1893, a national depression hit the Bellingham area and numerous banks and businesses failed. Construction of the building’s exterior continued without delays. However, the depression finally took its toll as lack of funds squelched the work on the interior, leaving the second and third floors unfinished.

Clock faces were installed in the main tower, but no money existed to purchase working clocks so the clock hands on all four faces were set to permanently read 7 o'clock. The faces eventually blew out, victims of high winds and poor maintenance, leaving gaping holes. One object in the tower that did work was the three-foot diameter bronze bell, which was rung to alert the volunteer fire departments.

The building officially opened with the first council meeting on May 9, 1893. Among other business, the council voted to ban cows from roaming the streets between 7:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. The first violator was the former mayor, who was arrested for breaking his cow out of the pen that adjoined the city hall. The jury acquitted him after he convinced them the cow saw him walking by, was overcome by emotion, jumped the fence and followed him home.

A MUSEUM IS BORN
When New Whatcom and Fairhaven combined to form one town on Bellingham Bay in 1904, the New Whatcom City Hall became the city hall for Bellingham. So it remained until 1939, when a larger and more modern city hall was built on Lottie Street. (Itself now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.)

In November of that year, a group of volunteers headed by John M. Edson formed the Bellingham Public Museum Society and the next year committed to occupy the old city hall under a five-year lease.

Edson was an amateur ornithologist who had written many articles on birds in national publications. His collection of 320 birds was one the Museum’s original displays. These birds, along with more than 200 from other collections, are now on display in the Syre Education Center next door at 201 Prospect Street.

The Museum officially opened January 23, 1941 but temporarily closed in December because of poor heating. Museum workers continued to deal with freezes until 1944, when repair funds became available after Bellingham citizens voted to accept the Museum as a municipal institution.

TRIAL BY FIRE
A devastating fire caused by faulty wiring brought many changes in 1962. The main tower and much of the roof went up in smoke, leaving only a skeleton of charred beams, some of which miraculously held the 700-pound bell in place. Ironically, this same bell rang during the great fire of 1894 when flames that burned surrounding forest almost swept through the city.

Although few artifacts were lost in the fire, the building was no longer fit for exhibit or storage. An extensive fund-raising drive led by Pat Fleeson commenced for restoration and modeling which continued over a 12-year period. The Museum fully opened in 1974 with a professional staff to provide permanent and changing exhibits and education programs.

ECHOES REMAIN
The building today remains a rare vintage of French-inspired Victorian architecture in the northwest. Built on a sandstone bluff overlooking Bellingham Bay, the building’s exterior consists of red bricks trimmed with gray Chuckanut sandstone. Four matching cupolas, each four stories high, occupy the corners of the building. A bell tower with four clock faces rises from the center.

Although the Whatcom Museum exterior is restored nearly to its original look, the interior has mostly been remodeled into modern museum galleries and workrooms. Some original features remain, including the paneled hallway and balustrade and the iron columns in the second floor main gallery. A number of interior doors are original although some are reproductions. Many kinds of wood were used in decorating the Museum. Original doors and door frames are mainly of cedar, as is the balcony railing. First-floor paneling is maple and the grand staircase balustrade is oak with mahogany inserts. The Museum’s chandelier collection is comprised of period pieces removed from other buildings or modern replicas of chandeliers from the 1890s.

Most of the interior spaces are similar to their original spaces, including the main second-floor gallery and the third-floor viewing gallery above. Although working spaces in the city hall changed over the years, the location of some of the offices can be described in relation to the present Museum floor plan. The basement of the building, now used for construction and maintenance, housed the city police department and jail and a gallery on the first-floor was the mayor’s office.

The galleries on the first floor were once the treasurer and comptroller’s offices. The main gallery on the second floor served first as an armory and then was used as the city council chamber and courtroom.

The fourth floor is used by staff for administrative purposes. Raw and unfinished, this part of the Museum bears evidence of the 1962 fire. Charred support beams are still in place and exposed. The clock tower, accessible via a spiral staircase, offers a 360-degree panorama of Bellingham and Bellingham Bay.

A THRIVING MODERN MUSEUM
Celebrating old city hall’s 100th anniversary, the Whatcom Museum expanded in 1992 with the opening of three additional (existing) buildings to provide exhibit space, education programs, hands-on children's activities and house the Museum’s collections. In 2007, plans for a new facility with state-of-the-art exhibition spaces began. In 2009, the Lightcatcher building opened with both fine art and family-interactive galleries. Today, the Museum’s Old City Hall building continues to provide a bridge between Bellingham’s past and future with a permanent historical exhibition (Artifactual) on the main floor and the second-floor Rotunda Room used for a range of special programs and concerts and private events. About 80,000 people visit the extended campus annually.