Newport Wants a $5,000 City Hall—and the County Court to Go With It
Citizens back a bond issue to build municipal quarters and offer them to the new judicial district as courthouse and jail.
At the City Hall last evening a meeting was held of those who signed the guarantee to the county commissioners that the town of Newport would provide adequate quarters for the newly created judicial district of Stevens County. There was a good attendance of representative business men and citizens of the town.
Lee Berry, president of the Commercial Club, presided over the meeting with Fred L. Wolf as secretary. After considerable discussion a resolution was unanimously adopted requesting the town council to submit to the voters of the town the proposition of bonding in the sum of $5,000 or such sum as the council may find necessary, for the erection of a city hall building to provide the necessary equipment for city purposes and to be tendered the county for use as a courthouse and jail.
A committee consisting of C. A. Fiedler, F. C. Krause and Charles Bell was appointed to provide temporary quarters for the court and its officers, to be used until such time as the city can go through the preliminary work of bonding and building its own structure.
The kind of a city hall and the amount of money to be voted for that purpose is as yet undecided. The council will endeavor to ascertain as closely as possible the wishes of the people in the matter before proceeding. That the council will be backed up in this matter by practically a unanimous sentiment of the people is apparent from the interest shown and the realization of the importance of the move to the town.
“That the council will be backed up in this matter by practically a unanimous sentiment of the people is apparent from the interest shown.”
Newport’s leaders wanted a combined city hall and county courthouse to secure a new judicial district and show the town had arrived. The same bargain—public borrowing for civic buildings, with local government competing for county facilities—still shapes small-city politics. Then as now, the argument was not just about office space but about which town would hold the court, the jobs and the official business.
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