PRESTON CITY HALL

Preston is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 9 km north from Melbourne's Central Business District. Its Local Government Area is the City of Darebin. At the 2011 Census, Preston had a population of 29,925. The area where Preston now resides was first surveyed by Robert Hoddle in 1837 for sub-division. In 1850, Edward Wood, a settler from Sussex, England, opened a store at the corner of High Street and Wood Street. The original name for Preston was Irishtown. Meeting at the Wood store, members of the Ebenezer Church, Particular Baptist from Brighton, England met to change the name. They wanted to name the town after their former home in Sussex, but Brighton was already taken. Instead they named it after Preston, a small village also in Sussex, where the church members had happy annual outings.

Preston City Hall (or Preston Town Hall) is located at 284 Gower St (Corner High St and Gower St) in Preston. The majority of Council Halls are known as Town Hall, it appears Preston calls theirs, City Hall. The Preston City Hall was designed by Birtwhistle & Scanlan in 1893 for the City of Preston and opened in 1895. The original building combined Queen Anne, Elizabethan and French Second Empire influences to produce a highly animated and picturesque composition despite the small size  of the building.

In 1929, the City of Preston commissioned its own architects to design the second stage public hall and this itself was extended further when A. L. Leith & Associates' third-stage front offices and linking façade completed the composition in 1934. It was not until 1975 when the final stages were added, which included a doubling of Birtwhistle and Scanlan's original building. The 1975 extension was very careful to preserve the style of the older building and is difficult to discern except for the absence of mansard roofs.

"The Connection" is  a sculpture by Michael Snape in the Preston Civic Forecourt, High Street, Preston. It depicts many people coming together in an animated, lively way, the separate components becoming one. It refers to the meaningful links between different groups in the community and the connections which contribute to harmony in Darebin.

This post is part of the Signs, Signs meme.