City Hall

The original City Hall, built in 1892, was a brick and stone building with a bell tower located at Fourth Street and Madison Avenue. The present City Hall was originally constructed for $50,000 in 1924 as a Methodist Church as a wood-framed building with unreinforced concrete block and brick exterior walls. During World War II, the building became the site of the United Service Organization’s Canteen, where servicemen stationed at Oregon State University and Camp Adair gathered for recreation. After the war, City Hall became a women's dormitory for OSU. In 1948, the City entered into an agreement to lease, and later buy the building. From 1987 to 1989, City Hall was extensively remodeled. In 2005 and 2006, changes to the City Hall block included renovation of the Madison Avenue Building and minor renovations to City Hall. 

An earthquake stabilization project was completed in 2011.  Staff first began aggressively pursuing grant funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) Program in 2007, but funding was not available. The City was persistent in its efforts to obtain grant funding, and in 2010, funding was delivered to the City for 75% of the approximate $1.1 million seismic improvement project cost, which included the costs of relocation and temporary facilities. Twenty-five percent came from City funds and of that, about half came from property tax supported funds allocated in the City's Capital Improvement Program (CIP).

In the decades since this property entered use as a municipal building, the City of Corvallis has done its best to adapt this historic building to meet the needs of the modern workplace. Changing workplace culture, universal access requirements, security concerns, and ongoing impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in ongoing costs as City Hall serves the community in the 21st century.