The Bay City City Hall

Normally, I will pass by the City Hall building on the way to my mom's.  I haven't taken pictures of it in a while because it has been in the process of being renovated after a fire in 2010.  However, the tower isn't damaged, so I'll start with pictures of that.

   For some reason, the clock tower reminds me of Big Ben.  Something tells me it was based on Big Ben.  At any rate, I think it is a pretty cool building.  It is a welcome change from so many of the bland city halls that are fairly common around here.

The first settler of Bay City was a man named Leon Tromble.  You can see his house near Veteran's Memorial Park.  In 1831, he built a log cabin along the banks of the Saginaw River.  Bay City was established in 1837 but was known as Lower Saginaw at the time.

 Originally, it was part of Saginaw County until Bay County was established in 1857.  At this time the town became known as Bay City but the city was split into two towns until 1905.

This is based on a picture I took while I was taking photography in high school.  Although that picture was taken with film and developed by me.  That was actually pretty fun.

This freize represents the major industries of Bay City at the time of the construction of city hall.  One of the biggest industries used to be lumbering.  There is also fishing and shipbuilding.  Lumbering fell by the wayside as the trees were harvested out.  The last shipbuilding company was Defoe which shuttered in 1975.  The last piece of major industry is the GM plant.

Construction on City Hall itself was complete in 1897.  The land it currently occupies was donated by Charles Fitzhugh who was one of the city's pioneers.  In the 1970's, it was proposed to demolish City Hall but they decided to renovate it instead.  In 2010, there was a fire and it sounds like it will be occupied again next spring.

And one more picture of it.