Community Building – Richmond UT

Description

The Public Works Administration (PWA) helped fund a Community Building in Richmond, Utah in 1936-1937. The building cost $45,000, of which $18,000 was furnished by a PWA grant and the rest provide by the City of Richmond. 

It is a single-story brick building which has had many lives.  As the Richmond Encyclopedia website recounts:

“The building’s purpose in its early years was to be used by the citizens of Richmond as a community building and theater. Once you entered the building, after visiting the ticket booth to your left, you were welcomed to a furnished building. Directly ahead was a ballroom with a kitchen attached. To your left was the hall that led to the theater/stage. On your right were the dressing rooms.

After some years it was later transitioned to a city office building, with the east wing of the building transformed into the City Council hall and city post office, and the west wing housing former Mayor Dr. J. Morris Godfrey’s Dentistry. In 1960, a new post office was constructed and the west wing was reorganized for City Council meetings. In 2018, with the purchase of the old Park Elementary building, the town hall … moved, and the Richmond Community Building was used as it was originally intended for, with the exception of the east wing that would be used as a jail for the Cache County Sheriffs Department. However, since 2021, Bear River Head Start now uses the building as a preschool with a playground located at the back of the Richmond Library.”

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.