St. George?s Town Hall has a colourful history. Bermuda?s Architectural Heritage, St. George?s, says the Town Hall on the King?s Square was built by the Corporation of St. George?s and completed less than 12 years after that body was created.

The parish vestry first proposed a building in 1765 that might serve as both a public market and assembly room but could not complete it.

The St. George?s municipal government under the leadership of its first mayor, Andrew Durnford, resolved to build a two storey town hall with a coffee house underneath.

The Corporation needed the hall as a regular place to meet, since the colonial government and parish vestry monopolised the only public meeting places in tow, St. Peter?s Church and the State House.

The coffee house in the 18th Century was traditionally a place where merchants and ship captains gathered to do business, and appealed to the members of the town. Before construction began on the Town Hall, the Corporation built a new Market Wharf, which spanned the inlet between the old Town Dock and Bridge Wharf.

Work commenced on the Town Hall in June, 1802.

The Corporation met there the first time in August 1805. The market on the ground floor opened in September1809 modelled after the open air markets so common in English towns and villages.

A Corporation-appointed clerk regulated the market. His duties were issuing licences to vendors, renting stalls, checking weights and measures and maintaining standards of quality.

The new market was particularly popular with the free blacks and slaves living in the eastern parishes. They regularly brought meat, fish and vegetables to town.

The building housing the Public Rest Rooms to the southeast of Town Hall was constructed between 1832 and 1834 as the new market house for St. George?s.

Its closer proximity to Market Wharf made it easier for fisherman and country traders to land their wares.

By the 1840s it was open six days a week, selling everything from fresh baked bread to just caught turtles and fish.

The market moved in the 1870s to a new, larger building to the west.

Nicolas McCallan acquired the former market and converted it into a grocery store. Later, in the 1920s and 30s it was a tavern and restaurant and the Corporation converted it into public rest rooms in the 1980s.