The Boston Municipal Council Offices were completed in 1902 to the designs of the architect James Rowell. The building is built of red brick with slate roofs, has a rock-faced granite plinth and is faced in red and buff-coloured terracotta with much moulded detailing. It was designed as a multi-purpose facility and included not only municipal offices, council chamber and Mayor’s parlour, but also accommodation for the town’s fire service and police force. The building has undergone extensive internal remodelling and enlargement and no longer houses the fire and police services, but evidence of these former functions, including parts of the former police cells, survive. The main elevation, of ten bays and two storeys, is a display frontage containing almost all of the building’s external architectural detail. Several bays have ornate Dutch-style gables with flanking diminutive pinnacles. The ground floor is faced in red terracotta and has deeply channelled piers between the window openings. Bays three and seven have deeply-recessed entrances with half-glazed double doors. The eighth bay has the two former fire-engine entrances now altered to form window openings. At the left-hand end is a wide, arched opening with decorative metal gates which gives access to the original entrance foyer and corridor. To the left of this is a 20th century, three-storey extension to the building that contains the new entrance and customer service facilities. Above the ground-floor openings is a wide storey band with dentil decoration. The upper storey is faced in banded terracotta and has window openings of varying design, all with banded terracotta surrounds and keyed heads. To the rear of the central gable is a truncated pyramidal tower which used to have a decorative metal openwork cap. The side and rear elevations are of red brick and are more plainly detailed. Much of the building’s interior has undergone alteration over the years and now (2011) houses modern office and storage space. Tiled wall surfaces have been over-painted, open plan office areas created and some internal joinery replaced. The principal interior of interest is the council chamber which remains largely unaltered and is representative of the town council’s aspirations in the early 20th century. A highly decorative ceiling is subdivided into square panels by moulded ribs with roundels at their intersections, with each panel filled with a cartouche. An arcaded entrance passage with marble columns opens into the chamber, and on the opposite wall is a series of stained glass windows with heraldic representations of various aspects of the town’s history, the three central windows are set within a shallow curved recess. The council chamber is fully panelled with a fine, carved chimneypiece and overmantle incorporating the borough’s Coat of Arms. Much of the original fixed furniture designed for the chamber remains in-situ. The principal first-floor corridor, leading from the chamber to the main stair, retains original door joinery and architraves. The staircase retains its decorative wrought-iron baluster panels, and a moulded handrail. The other main rooms are the mayor’s parlour and the member’s committee room, both of which have been altered. This building is clearly of local interest and is significant in the street-scape. It has, however, been significantly remodelled and consequently its interest is limited and it did not satisfy the criteria for statutory designation in 2011. {1}