Perth Town Hall

The Perth Town Hall, situated on the corner of Hay and Barrack streets, is the only convict-built town hall in Australia.

Designed by Richard Roach Jewell and James Manning in the Victorian Free Gothic style, the hall was built by convicts and free men between 1868 and 1870. Its decorations contain a number of convict motifs, including windows in the shape of the broad arrow, decorations in the shape of a hangman's rope.

The foundation stone for Perth Town Hall was laid on the 24th of May 1867 by Governor Hampton in a ceremony involving a lot of pomp and parade. However there were torrential downpours. The ceremony went on anyway with an official procession from Government House and a mock battle performed by the Volunteer Regiments, Enrolled Forces of Pensioners, and the WA Country Regiment.

For many decades in the twentieth century, shops were built into the sides of the ground floor, and the public lavatories accessible from Barrack Street were the only ones available for some distance. The shops included pharmacies, and lunch bars. All these businesses and the attendant structures were removed prior to the renovation of the hall.

At the time of its centenary in 1970 [Phelps, Delys (1969) "100 years : a history of the Perth Town Hall" originally printed in the Royal Western Australian Historical Society's Journal. - reprinted by the Perth city council in 1970 ] the ground floor was still full of commercial businesses.

The Town Hall was restored in the late 1990s at the base in an award-winning restoration to repair the interior of the hall and the gothic arches at its base, which were "modernised" in the middle of the 20th century.

External links

* [http://www.cityofperth.wa.gov.au/html/ser09_townhall.php Town Hall fact page, City of Perth]
* [http://innopac.liswa.wa.gov.au/record=b1763944 Pre-1910 photo showing original arches]
* [http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/ahdb/search.pl?mode=place_detail;place_id=10331 Australian Heritage Database citation (including 1980's photo showing 20th century alterations)]

References