After 98 years on the corner of Second Street and Baker Avenue, Whitefish’s historic city hall was torn down last week to make way for a new municipal building and parking garage.
Demolitionists had been picking away at the former city hall and fire station near downtown Whitefish for more than a week, but the original city hall building remained standing until Oct. 27. While the new building and parking garage are constructed, the city has temporarily moved to an office building further south at 1005 Baker Avenue.
Constructed in 1917, the building once held both the fire department and city hall. According to Stumptown Historical Society Executive Director Jill Evans, Mokaturo M. Hori, a local Japanese-American businessman, donated part of the land for the city hall and for years a bronze plaque commemorated his “generous gifts of real estate to the city of Whitefish.”
“He was an astute businessman who loved the United States and Whitefish,” Evans said.
In later years, the building also housed the police department and a second floor library, where the city council chambers were eventually located. For years, city council meetings were held in the basement, according to former Mayor Mike Jenson, who recalled instances where people would have to sit on the stairs or stand in the doorway just to partake in city business.
“It was always a cramped building,” he said.
The city chambers moved upstairs when the library moved to its current location near Depot Park in the 1990s.
In the 1950s, the building was expanded and its brick exterior was covered with tile to give it a more modern appearance, a style that it retained until the end. Despite its expansion, by the end of the 20th century the city government was once again outgrowing the structure. In 1987, a new city hall was identified as a priority for the community in an urban renewal study. In 2011, the city council created a steering committee to get the project moving.
Construction of the new building, which will include municipal offices, a parking garage and retail space, is expected to take two years and cost nearly $14 million. Initial plans call for the construction of two stories, with a third floor added later.
After the old building was knocked down last week, bricks were loaded on to a trailer and taken to the snow storage lot at Railway Street and Columbia Avenue where residents looking for a memento could take as many as they wished; small tokens of Whitefish’s history.
“There are a lot of stories that swirl around the old city hall but it’s not so much about the building itself, it’s about what that happened in and around it,” Evans said.