History
St. Charles, Illinois was first settled in 1833 and was incorporated as a city in 1874. In the early 1890s, it became apparent that the settlement needed a main government building from which to conduct affairs. Mayor A. H. Bennett commissioned the structure that year, authorizing the purchase of the property from B. T. Hunt for $1,500 in 1891. The St. Charles City Council approved the building on March 12, 1892, accepting a bid from local builder F. W. Alexander for $5,496. The building received its common name from the words "City Building" that were carved into the front of the structure. The building functioned as St. Charles city hall until 1941, and still housed police and fire services until 1962. The 16th Judicial Circuit Court also used the building in the 1950s and 1960s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 21, 1979.
Read more about this topic: City Building
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)