The entry lobby in City Hall is beginning to look like a room at the Museum of Fine Arts, with the addition of signs to accompany the recently restored historical paintings of Watertown.
The foyer of City Hall has long been home to a pair of paintings depicting Watertown, one showing the town in the 1630s when it was founded, and one in the 1930s, around the time when City Hall was built. The signs have been installed in front of the paintings that hang on either side of the entryway off of Main Street.
The Historical Society received money from the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) to pay for the creation and manufacturing of the signs. The contents went through several iterations before reaching the final version, said Watertown Community Preservation Coordinator Lanae Handy. Initially, the signs were going to include some acknowledgements, a little bit of interpretation about the paintings, and information about the restoration of the artwork.
“It ended up being more of a public education panel to let citizens and the residents and people who visit City Hall know about the really rich history of Watertown,” Handy said. “So we’re very excited to have this information. And we hope that people stop in and visit and read and learn more about the City, because there are some really cool facts that we have listed here dating back to the early founding of the town, up until the early 20th Century.”
Joyce Kelly of the Historical Society of Watertown said the historic info had to be condensed into a more digestible length.
“It was very difficult,” Kelly said. “We first started out with way too much information and Will Twombly — who also worked on the panels and that for he’s a professional doing displays museums — he said you can’t pay too much information on there, because people will gloss over it, so you have to sort of get it down to chunks.”
The signs include historical nuggets, fun facts, and “some nice photographs,” Handy said.
“Elodia Thomas — who was the former chair of the CPC — it was very important to her (to have the signs), because she wanted people in Watertown to have a pride of place and knowing all these interesting facts about their town,” Handy said.
The wording may be more concise, but Kelly said she believes it still gives good details.
“I honestly think we got a lot of the really important facts on there, but there’s always plenty more to find and read about, and hopefully it piques people’s interest and they will go to the library and do some research and they will go to the library and do some research,” Kelly said.
The two paintings underwent significant cleaning starting in 2022 and returned to the foyer in 2024. The project was the first one to receive Community Preservation Act funds in 2022.
“I think the restoration was so interesting,” Kelly said. “I know some people won’t remember what shape these were in, way back then, and to actually see it before and after. It’s really eye opening. It really is. I mean, they look, they look so much better than they did when they were up a couple years ago.”
The Historical Society plans to bring Louise Orsini, the conservator who restored the paintings, to town to talk about the project, probably in the spring, Kelly said.
“So we’re looking forward to having some programming around that in coming months,” she said.