A day late, but I still made it during the weekend for this week’s Sepia Saturday! Our prompt image featured a photo of a cinema, but not having a photo of a cinema in my collection, I went with a photo of a town hall in Philipsburg, PA. We’d probably driven past this town hall a number of times, but once I looked through the trunk of photos found when grandpa passed away, I found this and I KNEW it looked familiar but couldn’t place it. Wouldn’t you know, the next time we drove through that small town, there it was! The building has changed a little since 1951 when my photo was taken, and you can see the current view on Google Maps in Street View. The building was originally the home of the Hope Fire Company, built in 1889, which would explain the big garage doors on the front of the building. In 1960, the Fire Department moved out of the building pictured above and today it serves as the town hall. I’m not quite sure why my grandpa took photos of the building other than that he happened to be thre with a camera. We have tons of photos that he saved and he seemingly always had a camera of some sort or another with him. It’s great though, because even in the somewhat mundane photos that don’t have people in them, you can still find something interesting.
I see the fire doors have been done away with, but I like the building design very much.
I see the resemblance between the buildings. Nice to see that it has found a repurpose. I was at a restaurant recently in a former garage and the big doors, like those on the fire station, open up to a wonderful patio.
Until I read the post I thought, “Garage doors on a town hall? I guess they open them for meetings to let everyone in town in.” And I can understand having photos that seem to make no sense. My father and I each have slides of a railroad crossing in Austria. I can remember us getting out of the car and taking the snaps, but neither of us could ever remember why we took them. We’ll leave the future generations to ponder that.