Ellsworth City Hall

A fire tore through downtown Ellsworth in 1933, taking the old city hall with it. What replaced it — completed in 1935 with Federal Civil Works Administration labor and a Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan — was something no one in rural Maine would have expected: a two-story Georgian Revival brick building designed by Philadelphia architect Edmund Gilchrist, who summered on nearby Mount Desert Island. The cupola, the carved city seal above the entry, the flanking wings — all of it reflects Philadelphia more than coastal Maine. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986.