Students pose before the Center School, about 1890. Note the outhouse behind the school, and the “Y” intersection at Haynes and Main Street. The more gradual curve made the corner easier for teams and wagons.
In an unusual partnership, the town permitted the Worcester South Agricultural Society to add at its own expense a second story to the “Town House” in 1859. The Society, which conducted the annual Sturbridge Fair, used the second floor for exhibit space and other related purposes. The town bought out its co-tenant in 1868. In this early photograph, “Agricultural Hall” appears above the second-floor central windows.
In step with the Greek Revival in architecture, the pillars and portico were added about 1910, with the intent of suggesting that the Town Hall was a “temple of government”. In 1974, the left-hand pillar toppled, a victim of years of wind and weather. Without restoration, the current pillars may meet a similar fate.
Many town organizations used the Veterans’ Memorial Hall. In 1934, a total of 375 meetings of one sort or another were held in Town Hall. The building has also hosted theatrical performances, including a theater-in-the-round in the 1960s.
June 18, 1938—“a most perfect day”—more than 300 residents participated in the celebration of the Sturbridge Bicentennial. The homespun historical pageant held on land which would later become Old Sturbridge Village included the Spirits of the Fields and Streams, Indians, Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette, a “soiree Canadienne”, and the Spirit of the Future. A gala parade passed before the decorated Town Hall.
The following are additional photographs of the Town Hall before and after the pillars were installed and of the Center School while it was still used as a school building.
Photos and text courtesy of Brian Burns, Sturbridge: A Pictorial History (1988). Photographic restoration by Robert S. Arnold.
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