Pendleton City Hall Complex: City Hall & Library (Pendleton Junior High School) – Pendleton OR

Description

The current Pendleton City Hall, Library and Municipal Court occupy a Public Works Administration (PWA) funded structure built in 1936-1937. When opened in February 1937, it served the community as its junior high school. To decorate its interior space, New Deal funds supported artists’ work on a mural for the school’s library.

Over the years several changes took place in this central part of the three civic buildings. Additions extended the eastern and western portions of the school in 1942, 1946 and 1956. After this last renovation, the Pendleton Junior HIgh School name was changed to Helen McClune Junior High in honor of an admired former teacher.

The transformation from its use as a school occurred in 1996 when a new central entrance was added to the north of the building and improvements were made to accomodate the city’s library, municipal court and civic offices. The entrance stairway directs the public to either the library on the second floor or city offices on the first floor. The Municipal Court has an entrance at the back of the building as well.

When the building no longer functioned as a school, the New Deal era mural was moved from the Junior HIgh’s former library to the Heritage Station Museum, which houses the Umatilla Historical Society’s collection.

Despite these changes to the central building in the complex, the structures’ original Art Deco/Moderne style was maintained. For this reason as well as its link to PWA funding and the status of its architects, the state’s Historic Preservation Office recommended the civic complex be nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. Decades after its construction, pride in the complex might be understood as it was expressed in a 1937 East Oregonian advertisement supported by local businesses that stated: “We are proud . . . Our Community Center, consisting of the Vert Memorial and the Junior High School, is an accomplishment of which we are proud. It fills a long-felt need of this community. We have a marvelous Junior High School; an excellent auditorium; an abundant gymnasium; wonderful club rooms and the foundation of a worth-while museum.”