Government Buildings

Post Office, Southington, Connecticut

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The Post Office building on Main Street in Southington, in May 1942. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA-OWI Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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Like the nearby Town Hall, this building was fairly new when the first photo was taken.  It opened in 1940, and was one of over a thousand post office buildings in the country that were constructed during the New Deal era.  Intended to provide jobs as well as new buildings for communities across the country, many of these post offices are still in use today, including this one in Southington.  It was later expanded with a sizable addition in the back and to the left, but the exterior of the original 1940 section remains essentially unchanged from the first photo.  Even parts of the interior are the same, including a mural by Ann Hunt Spencer, which can be seen in this 1942 interior photo of the post office on the Library of Congress website.

Town Hall, Southington, Connecticut

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Southington’s Town Hall, seen facing north toward the First Congregational Church in May 1942. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA-OWI Collection.

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The Town Hall in 2015:

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Of all the photos taken by the Office of War Information in Southington during World War II, this scene is one of the few that shows almost no change over the past 73 years.  The church, which has stood there since 1830, is still there, although it is now partially hidden by the large oak tree in front of it.  This tree is the only prominent difference between the two photos; it appears in the 1942 scene as a small sapling, barely visible in the shadows to the left of the church.  It had been planted in 1935 by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1935 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of Connecticut.

The Town Hall is the newest thing in the scene; it was dedicated on December 13, 1941, less than a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the start of World War II.  Less than six months later, it was included in the OWI photo series with the caption, “Town hall, in which all of the people meet to make their own laws.”  Since this was intended for a pro-American propaganda pamphlet in Europe, the wording of the caption expresses both the democratic nature of the town meetings, as well as the egalitarian aspect of it, with the word all implying that every citizen has an equal voice in town government.  Today, the building is still used as the Town Hall, but Southington has since adopted a council-manager form of local government, meaning the citizens no longer “meet to make their own laws” here in an open town meeting.

School Children in Southington, Connecticut

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A group of children, made up of teenagers and younger children, on the town green in Southington in May 1942. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA-OWI Collection.

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The scene in 2015:

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The caption of the first photo is “Southington school children staging a patriotic demonstration,” and it is probably related to the town’s Memorial Day observances.  It is part of a series of photos taken in Southington by the Office of War Information, to be published in a propaganda pamphlet overseas.  The intent of this photo was probably to show American sympathizers and other potential allies about the patriotism expressed even by young children, although the only overt display of patriotism in this particular scene is the American flag that the young girl on the tricycle is holding.

Today, the scene has not changed too much.  The two buildings in the background are still there: the town hall on the left, and a brick commercial building on the right.  The town hall opened less than six months before the first photo was taken, and it is still in use today, and the commercial building was probably built in the early 1900s.  The storefront once housed Southington’s post office, and in the 2015 photo it is apparently vacant and boarded up.  Both buildings can also be seen in this post, which was taken from a similar angle.

Old County Courthouse, Portsmouth, NH

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The old Rockingham County Courthouse, on Court Street opposite Court Place in Portsmouth, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The site in 2015:

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No court sessions have been held here for over 120 years, but the names of Court Street and Court Place still recall the former use of this location. In the early 19th century, county court sessions had been held in the old State House at Market Square, which had stood there since the days when Portsmouth was the colonial capital of New Hampshire.  However, the old building was dismantled in 1836, and the county court moved three blocks south to this newly-constructed Greek Revival courthouse. This building served as a courthouse until 1891, at which point it became a National Guard armory.  It was moved from this location before 1916, when the present-day Central Fire Station was built, but it has since been demolished.

City Hall, Lowell, Mass

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Lowell City Hall, photographed around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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City Hall in 2015:

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There aren’t many centrally-planned cities in New England. Most grew over time out of 17th century Puritan settlements, but the city of Lowell was different. Planned from the start as an industrial center, Lowell was one of the leading manufacturing cities in the country for much of the 19th century, and toward the close of the century its prosperity led to the construction of a new city hall.  It was dedicated in 1893, and represents the Romanesque style of architecture that was common in late 19th century America, especially in government buildings and churches.  At the time, the city was the third largest in the state, after Boston and Worcester, with an economy based largely on the textile industry.

The city reached its peak of prosperity soon after the first photo was taken, but by the 1920s the factories began to close as industries relocated to other parts of the country.  Today, there isn’t much manufacturing left in the city, but the population has rebounded to pre-World War I levels, with many of the former factories being redeveloped and reused for housing and commercial space.  City Hall is still in use, and is relatively unchanged from over a century ago.  It forms the centerpiece of the City Hall Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is just a few blocks away from the Lowell National Historical Park, where many of the historic factory buildings have been preserved as museums.

County Jail, Lowell, Mass

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The Middlesex County Jail on Thorndike Street in Lowell, around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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It’s hard to find too many buildings with a more unusual combination of uses, but this building has seen it all over the past 159 years.  Opened as a jail in 1856, it could house just over 100 inmates, most of whom were serving relatively short sentences for minor crimes.  Architecturally, it is an early example of Romanesque Revival, a style that was popularized several decades later by Henry Hobson Richardson, and can be seen in many public buildings of the late 19th century.  The building was in use as a jail until 1919, when dwindling numbers of inmates meant the county couldn’t justify keeping it open.

Concerned that they might once again need it, Middlesex County held off on selling it until 1926, when the Catholic Church purchased it and converted it into a prep school, Keith Academy.  Since the interior layout of a jail is generally not effective for schools, the entire building was gutted in the conversion to Keith Academy, leaving the exterior mostly untouched but completely changing everything else.  The school closed in 1970, and the building later underwent another conversion, to condominiums.  Today, it houses 56 condominium units, and although the jail turned school turned housing complex has gone through a lot of changes in over a century and a half, from the outside it doesn’t look much different from when the first inmates arrived in 1856.