Description of Historic Place

The Boissevain Town Hall, constructed in 1910, is a two-storey public building clad in red brick and set prominently on a side street in Boissevain's commercial district. The municipal designation applies to the building and its grounds.

Heritage Value

The impressive Boissevain Town Hall is a well-maintained example of a community venture conceived and realized as a growing town set its course for the future in rural Manitoba's pre-World War I boom. Its ambitious design served the purposes of the day while exhibiting confidence in the future. Its generous dimensions allowed for use as a fire hall, courtroom, jail and civic offices while providing an upper-floor public hall of a style that only more affluent communities could afford. The highly visible structure features distinctive second-floor windows and decorative stone- and brickwork and leans on elements of Classical Revival styling with its pediment pilasters, shallow front pavilion and formal entrance.

Source: Town of Boissevain By-law No. 411, August 2, 1988

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Boissevain Town Hall site include:
- its location on a side street close to the main business street
- its placement facing west and close to the sidewalk, with its height dominating a neighbourhood of mixed commercial and residential structures

Key exterior elements that define the town hall's classically influenced design include:
- the structure's bold rectangular massing, two storeys high, enclosed by prominent red brick facades and a moderately pitched hip roof
- the symmetrically aligned bays of the front (west) and side elevations defined by shallow pilasters, inset brick panels and the ordered placement of windows and doors
- the three-bay front facade dominated by a pedimented centre pavilion, a large round-arched opening in the south bay and frames of smooth-cut and rusticated stone around the main floor and double-door entrance
- the eye-catching fenestration featuring single round-arched double-hung windows on the second floor, further highlighted on the front and north sides by stone sills, imposts and keystones; paired rectangular double-hung windows with continuous stone sills and lintels on the main floor; a transom over the front entrance; etc.
- decorative details such as stone and brick stringcourses, paired brick panels on the main facade below the modillioned white-painted metal cornice, the date stone and star-shaped emblem in the pediment, etc.


Key elements that define the building's interior heritage character include:
- the spacious and well-lit upper hall accessed by a wide staircase in the northwest corner and featuring an open plan with a high truncated round-arched ceiling and a stage at the east end, now enclosed by a wall
- the hall finishing materials such as natural maple flooring, ample wooden trim around windows and on the stage skirting, etc., and the wood wainscotting on the stairwell
- the hall details such as the metal light fixtures on the wall, suspended glass-bulb fixtures and side-hinged inner casement windows, some with handles