The Richwood Opera House and Town Hall was erected in 1890 as a community center designed to house the town council chambers, fire department, jail, and opera house. This Richardsonian Romanesque building served Richwood in all these capacities for nearly 75 years. The opera house hosted minstrel shows, concerts, movies, lecture courses, revivals, farmers' institutes, commencements, and community meetings. Its second-floor gymnasium was used for a men's independent basketball league, dance classes, and as a teen center after World War II. Construction of an interurban railway between Richwood and Magnetic Springs in 1906 expanded the opera house's audience. The Richwood Symphony Orchestra made its home here from the 1920s through the 1940s. The opera house later became the Union Theatre, which closed in the 1960s, and the space was then used to meet the growing needs of municipal government. The fire department remained here until 2001, when a new station was built. Significant as a nineteenth-century town hall, it continues to function as the village's center of government in the twenty-first century, and a restored 1903 clock atop the tower inspired the village motto, "Where the clock strikes hospitality."