Browsing though the U of M digital archives of the Mason & Rice collection, I came across this rendering from 1881 simply titled “Amherstburg Town Hall”
Now I’ve said it before, but I don’t know a lot about the history of the buildings in Essex County. Any idea if this place was ever built? I can’t say I’ve ever seen any other pictures of it. A quick google search doesn’t find anything on this building…. One for the “unbuilt” files?
They were incorporated as a town in 1878 so the timing is right for a shiny new town hall. I’m guessing the answer to this one is in the Marsh Collection?
best guess, southwest corner of Richmond and Bathurst, came across an old photo with a steepled building on the corner, figured it was a church in the distance
Not certain this was ever built sadly.
What a beauty it would have been.
The construction of this Mason & Rice designed structure was let to Walter Fairbairn of Detroit in August of 1883 and was opened to the public on July 10, 1884. It was located on the same site as the present Town Hall: the north east corner of Sandwich St. South and Gore St. This building served the community continuously as a town hall until it was razed in November of 1965 to make way for the construction of the present structure.
On March 10, 1890 it was nearly destroyed by a fire of questionable origin, but was quickly repaired.
This January 9, 1892 “Toronto Daily Mail” article featuring the town of Amherstburg includes a photograph of the town hall (see page 9):
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=34&dat=18920109&id=PWhNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XjcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6421,7099469&hl=en
One can see from this photo that the architectural rendering posted here (which I believe is wrongly dated as “1881” and more likely should be “1884”) fairly accurately depicts what was ultimately built.
Another later photographic view of this building can be found on the Marsh Historical Collection website (see page 5 of 10 of this pdf):
http://marshcollection.org/wp-content/uploads/Echoing-through-the-ages-1960s.pdf