Looming proudly over the city’s main thoroughfare for more than 130 years, the regal facade of Albany’s Town Hall has long been a familiar silhouette for those traversing the streets of the port city.

Recognisable by its two-storey stucco and granite frontage, and topped by a clock tower, the town hall has hosted everything from formal balls, theatre shows, and royals visits to citizenship ceremonies, abstract art exhibits, and craft markets.

But the much-loved municipal building, the town’s first, almost wasn’t built at all.

Furious debate surrounded whether Stirling Terrace or York Street would be the site of the hall, and the city’s poor finances, combined with its failure to secure a loan to cover the costs, meant the project’s start was delayed.

The council eventually bought the site on the corner of York and Grey streets for £650, with the Governor donating £500 towards building costs, and on December 9, 1886, Albany mayoress Ann Augusta Knight laid the foundation stone.

Placed under the stone was a leather-covered bottle containing several pound coins, a recent edition of the Albany Mail, and a note recording the event.

The Victorian Free Classical structure — its designs formulated by South Australian architects Henderson, Marriot and Co — rose steadily over the next two years, until June 1 1888, when, on a rainy Friday morning, Albany mayor William Grills Knight formally opened it to great fanfare.

“Mr Knight thanked all those present for their attendance, and the Hon. J. A. Wright enlivened the proceedings by calling for three cheers for Albany and our Town Hall,” The Albany Mail and King George’s Sound Advertiser wrote.

“Needless to say, the cheers were well given.”

The formal opening of the newly minted hall was followed by a banquet and a ball attended by ladies who had prepared gowns especially for the occasion.

It was another three years before the clock tower’s bells were first heard throughout the town, however, as the council had entirely run out of money to buy the clock faces, with empty nooks left on all four of the tower’s faces.

Made by Leeds clockmaker William Potts & Sons, the clock was installed in February 1891 at a cost of £107.

It was started at 2.57pm on April 15, and ran about 20 minutes ahead of timepieces in Perth until 1895, when WA adopted standard time.

For a number of years, the southern clockface was riddled with bullet holes.

Legend has it these were put here by a soldier returning from the Boer War in 1902, having been challenged by a fellow soldier to hit the clock from the foreshore.

While the upper floor of the hall was used for entertainment, such as a picture theatre and balls, the ground floor served as the town’s main municipal building, and housed the gas, electricity and water board.

The building underwent a number of minor changes in the decades that followed, with an upper gallery added in 1913, a dress circle and escape stairs in 1912, and a shed for the volunteer fire brigade was erected to its north in about 1909.

The Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, visited the hall on his royal visit to Australia in 1920 accompanied by a military guard of honour.

On June 2, 1953, the town hall housed the coronation celebrations, with an afternoon of song and a “box supper dance”.

Works began to restore the degrading hall in the 1980s, with ground-floor toilets, a lift, a lobby, bar, an extra staircase, and tiered seating installed, alongside an extension to the stage and further extension on the rear of the building to house a dressing room and public toilets.

These renovations, which effectively turned the hall into an intimate theatre, were completed in 1983 at a cost of $1m.

It was also in the early 1980s when the clock bells were silenced following complaints of inner-city residents.

The much-loved chime on the hour only returned 30 years later in 2014, when a team of experts restored the mechanism with modern safety adjustments.

Then-heritage minister Richard Lewis gave the landmark State heritage listing in 1996, saying the “much-loved building” deserved the “protection of the State’s heritage laws.”

The use of the town hall diminished when the larger-capacity Albany Entertainment Centre was built in 2010, with the historic venue used an average of about 48 days a year.

The venue was closed for about a year as further renovations to increase the hall’s flexibility for hosting functions, concerts and meetings were undertaken, reopening in 2020.

The main floor’s tiered seating and mezzanine wings were removed and replaced with floating, flat-floor furniture similar to its original design; and the old roof was replaced, as was the flooring.

Nearly 138 years after the people of Albany first set foot in the storied building, the town hall remains a grand civic building and meeting place, hosting live concerts such as Live @ The Town Hall, exhibitions, markets, talks, exhibitions, and any number of community events.

It has continued to quietly stand watch over the city in the decades since its construction, and remains a focal point in Albany’s landscape.