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Land for the city hall was purchased from Henry Landes in 1887. Voters in Port Townsend passed a bond issue to fund a new $30,000 city hall in 1891. Construction began in 1891 and finished in 02/1892, with space allocated for the city administration and fire department, as well as a jail and municipal court. City council meetings have occurred in a chamber on the second floor. Architects Batwell and Patrick designed Port Townsend's City Hall, an eclectic building with some Neo-Classical, Romanesque, and Queen Anne Style motifs. Virtually no information exists on the Batwell and Patrick firm, which seems to have lasted one or two years, c. 1890-1891; the pair designed approximately two other buildings in town, including the Dennis-Halteman building (1891) and the James C. Saunders House (1891)

As the Port Townsend City Hall, this building housed the courtroom, fire fighters, police, jail and city council chambers. City offices existed, in 2009, in an adjacent wing of what became Jefferson County Historical Society Museum. The Port Townsend City Council still had its chambers on the second floor of the old building and was, 2009, the oldest city council room in the State of Washington. The city hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, administered by the National Park Service, in 1971. Tel: 360.385.1003 (2009).

Franklin Roosevelt's Civil Works Administration (CWA) obtained funding and manpower to repair mechanical systems, recover the roof and paint the city hall in 1933-1934. The building's pyramidal tower and unoccupied third floor sustained damage in a 1945 storm and were removed soon thereafter. In the original municipal courtroom, the Jefferson County Historical Society Museum set up its offices in 1951. A built-up flat roof replaced the original, an unfortunate substitution. The City of Port Townsend rehabilitated the city hall in 2005-2006, and built an addition designed to bolster the original facility's structural integrity.

Block 44, Lots 6-8