The history of Foxton's civic buildings seems appropriate with concerns about their earthquake durability and future.
It appears the first building used by local bodies was the old immigration barracks located where the police station house is today, next to the court house built c1867.
Originally the court house was a wooden building, but by the 1920s it had become pretty decrepit and was replaced in 1929 by the brick building, -which has now been identified as an earthquake risk. The Court was closed in the early 1970s and became the Borough's property. It was used to house the Historical Society's Museum collection, originally in the Memorial Hall's Podmore Room.
In 1878 the Manawatu County Council set up its headquarters in Foxton
and built their office in Liddell Street. It was later used as a residence but destroyed by fire in the 1990s.
Foxton's Service Centre began its life in 1908. It was built as a replacement for the original Borough Council 1908 building, which like so many Foxton buildings, was destroyed by fire. The original building included a library and residential quarters.
A library was not included in the new corrugated iron building that was erected where the entrance to De Molen is today.
When the library went into the then new Memorial Hall in the 1950s, the Foxton Little Theatre used the old library until the 1970s when they moved into St Andrew's Church. The library eventually moved out of the Memorial Hall into its present location in Clyde Street, which had been a residence.
The first public halls in Foxton were not owned by the public but were private concerns. The first, built in the 1870s, was the Athenaeum which stood where the Salvation Army shop is today. Later there was a hall in what is now Hall Street but was originally Loudon Street, This was near the site of the Fire Station. The Borough Council had the Coronation Hall (now Mavtech) built in 1911 but this also met a fiery fate in 1925 and the Town Hall was opened there in 1927.
The renaming of this building with its present title was a mistake as the building was the Town Hall, not another Coronation Hall.
After World War II the town wanted a war memorial of some form and a hall won the 'battle" over a town clock!
The Memorial Hall was then built on the site, incorporating some of the walls of Hamer's Royal Theatre built in 1912 as a movie theatre. That theatre had to be rebuilt in 1929 after, you guessed it, a destructive fire.
