History of Old City Hall Apartments

The Spark

Since the early 1900's the Walnut Street property has housed schools and now apartments. Jeb Stuart the President of the Board of Directors of the Historic Harrisburg Association says the building means so much to so many people.

"Well, it was a landmark, and, and had a lot of history. There are a lot of alumni from old tech, as it was called, and there was the Tech Golden Legion, which resolved the alumni association of a lot of folks and met in Harrisburg. They had gone there. So there was kind of, you know, a feeling about the history that was important. But above and beyond that, it was, a significant building architecturally, a sound building, and had a lot of architectural character."

The structured was a technical school for boys in Harrisburg around 1910, before the building became the Old City Hall building.

"There are two parts to it. The original part of the building was built around 19 four, 1905, which is the the back part, the brick part of the building and the main part of the building, which people see today along Walnut Street, was completed in 1911. And the English Collegiate style is really a cool building architecturally, and it served for many years as the technical high school, which was really the principal downtown high school for boys. And it was, fulfilled that role until the mid 1920s, actually until 1927, when John Harris High School, and the eastern end of the city and William Penn High School at the northern end of the city were completed, which kind of consolidated all what were schools in the downtown area and the new two new, very large campuses that we all know to this day. When that happened, old City Hall became, renovated as the site for city government and became city hall. And it served that purpose, starting in 1927, all the way up until the new city hall was completed on Market Square in the early 1980s."

Stuart even worked as a city clerk in the Old City Hall building when it was located on Walnut Street.

" I was city clerk to Harrisburg City Council at the time, and council chambers was on the second floor, and my office was on the second floor. And, I spent many interesting sessions with city council and, of course, the general public coming in, for one reason or another. And I knew, many of the folks in City Hall at the time I started in the city planning Bureau, which was on the second floor. And that's that that was the time that we started to, inventory and create the municipal historic districts in the downtown. So it was an interesting time, at least for me, and also for the city in general, and trying to to coordinate the value of historic preservation efforts through the historic district creation and also marry that with the goals of the Harristown Plan in terms of the development of the central business district. When word came out that the building was going to be vacated, for, the new building on Market Square. I think a lot of people accepted that, understood why that was happening. Understood it was part of a broader mission and a broader goal. But it was interesting in that there was the Harrisburg City Archives, all the documents, all the ledgers, everything, all the photography of the city's history was located in and the old City Hall building. And I remember when it was being cleaned out, for the move to the new one. The mayor at that time, Steve Reed, was very, aggressive in stopping the, removal of those archives because at that time they thought, well, it was just paper. And, you know, we have to get rid of all this stuff. Nope, nope. He was able to save that. And those archives, thankfully, have been preserved over the years and are now, part of the Pennsylvania State Archives headquarters facility on North sixth Street and can be accessed by the general public."

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