Since Lewiston's founding in 1892, three separate Town Hall buildings stood near this site. The first was lost in the fire of 1917, and town offices and functions moved to the second Town Hall, the vacant Lewiston House Hotel just west across Hanson Street. Although residents intended to rebuild, funds were scarce after the mill closed, and not until 1933, with federal funding through the WPA Program, was the Lewiston House dismantled so its sturdy native pine timbers, some 20 feet long, could be used to build the third Town Hall. During the bitter winter of 1933-34, one of the coldest on record with a low of negative 48 degrees, the men building it literally ran to work to stay warm and earned 50 cents a day. These Town Halls were the center of community life as well as government, hosting weekly dances, graduations, concerts, plays, talent shows, birthdays, and weddings. The third Town Hall served for almost 30 years before it too burned in 1962. Fire was a recurring menace in Lewiston, as in many early lumber towns. While the mill operated, the power plant's huge boilers supplied water to fire hydrants and electricity to many homes, greatly reducing fire danger, but when the mill closed the water stopped flowing and residents returned to kerosene lighting and wood stoves, which caused many fires. So many buildings burned that insurance companies refused coverage in Lewiston for many years. Damage was limited chiefly by the wide spacing and firebreak role of Kneeland Street, which the early founders had planned with that danger in mind from the beginning. For many years electricity remained a private luxury generated in detached buildings because generators themselves were also a fire risk. Widespread electricity did not reach Lewiston until 1936, when the New Deal's Rural Electrification Act provided federal funds to install electrical systems in rural America and isolated communities like Lewiston, usually through member-owned cooperative power companies, several of which still serve northern Michigan today.