City Of Oswego Celebrates City Hall’s 150th Anniversary, Renovation Project

The City of Oswego celebrated the City Hall's 150th anniversary as well as the completion of the $2.6 million renovation project. Photo by Matt Watling

OSWEGO – On Monday, the City of Oswego celebrated Oswego City Hall’s 150th anniversary with the dedication of roadside plaques from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation for both city hall and the John O’Connor Conway Building.

The Pomeroy foundation offers these plaques to properties that are on the National Register of Historic Places, a list that city hall and the Conway Building were placed on in the 1970s. These plaques offer Oswego to continue to pass down and educate people of the rich history these places have in the city.

“[The Pomeroy Foundation] strongly believes that markers offer many benefits,” said Susan Hughes, an ambassador of the Pomeroy Foundation. They help educate the public, encourage pride in a place and promote historic and cultural tourism.” 

Aside from being awarded with these plaques, Monday was also a celebration of the renovation project which was just completed. In a 2013 study, Oswego City Hall was in dire conditions with a “crumbling” wall right behind the mayor in the Council Chamber, as Mayor Billy Barlow described it. 

“When I was inaugurated, the outgoing DPW commissioner was here … the supervisor told me, ‘you really should not sit at your desk in the Common Council Chamber,’ I asked why and he said, ‘because the wall behind you is actually crumbling and we’ve been throwing up red flags about the South wall for a few years now and at any time they could go,’” Barlow said. “They couldn’t stress enough how uncomfortable they were with that wall.”

Because of this, Barlow proposed a $2.6 million project to stabilize and repoint exterior walls, renovate the roof and clock tower, install new gutters and re-landscape the grounds. The project was approved in 2017 and PAC Associates, a local contractor, began construction in May 2020. This project was so important for the city and Barlow specifically that he included it in his five-year plan when he first took office, as he said in his speech. Five years later, the Oswego City Hall has been successfully renovated to preserve the historic building.

In Barlow’s speech to the public, he expressed his appreciation for the local landmark that is city hall and the great architecture in the city as a whole.

“Growing up in Oswego, I did not put a lot of thought into [the city hall architecture],” Barlow said. “But it was not until I went out West for college in Arizona, that had no architecture, where everything is brown and basically built out of cardboard that I began to appreciate and actually value the architecture we have here in the Northeast.”

The architecture of city hall that Barlow speaks so highly of was designed by Horatio N. White who previously designed the Oswego County Courthouse and Oswego Armory. The city hall was made of Onondaga Limestone with a mansard roof, as well as Romanesque windows and classical engaged columns, according to a pamphlet at the event. 

The $2.6 million renovation project will assure the city that its city hall will stand for “many decades” to come, as Barlow put it, ensuring that Oswego will continue to maintain its selection of historic buildings.

“We are very fortunate to work in a building like this with how historic this building is,” Common Council President Rob Corradino said. “The City of Oswego is so fortunate to have so many historic buildings … We have Fort Ontario, the Richardson Bates house, it goes on and on. Our city is so lucky to have a history [as rich] as ours.”

 

Print this entry