Westwood Town Hall emerged from the Village of Westwood’s desire for a civic center in 1888, twenty years after the village’s founding. A triangular 3-acre lot had been acquired in 1884 from James Slaven, and by March 1888 architect Charles C. Crapsey of Crapsey & Brown began designing the Shingle-Style building. Residents overwhelmingly approved construction in April 1888, and later that summer Michael Werk, H.M. Ernst, Robert Orr, and Sidney S. Jackson laid the cornerstone on July 28, 1888. Completed in 1889, the building became the village’s seat for town council, administrative offices, a jail, and its volunteer fire department, with committee rooms, the mayor’s office, dressing rooms for ladies and men, a ticket office, a great hall for civic meetings, and two smaller halls on the second floor. It was dedicated on April 13, 1889, with Councilman James N. Gamble and his wife Margaret Penrose Gamble presiding over inaugural festivities and Councilman George C. Witt handing the keys to Mayor Louis Reseemelin. When Cincinnati prepared to annex the Village of Westwood in 1895, fears that the building might be sold or razed troubled villagers, and the village’s last mayor, James N. Gamble, pressed Cincinnati’s Board of Administration to preserve the building and its park-like grounds for Westwood citizens. Westwood became part of the City of Cincinnati on May 8, 1896, and the building remained its civic center. From its beginning it also served theatrical productions, civic presentations, orations, and musical concerns, hosted the Westwood Conservatory of Music, Westwood Choral Society, and musicians and singers, and housed Westwood’s YMCA from 1894 to 1966.