Colonial Hall
Wellfleet Town Hall
Historic Wellfleet MA
2013

South Wellfleet Church Moves to Wellfleet and Becomes the Town Hall

An old article in The Cape Codder about the burning of Wellfleet’s Town Hall in 1960 recently came to my attention. That fire totally destroyed the building. I’ve already written briefly about the history of Town Hall in a post about South Wellfleet’s Second Congregational Church. Now I wanted to expand that history of the movement of the church to the center of town, its re-naming to Colonial Hall, and its eventual conversion to Wellfleet’s Town Hall.

Charles F. Cole’s 1941 booklet “History of Colonial Hall” provided a good beginning. Mr. Cole dates the sale of the building to 1913, and the actual move to 1919. He names Harry B. Swett as the new owner, a trustee of the DAR.

Another important fact regarding the movement of the church building is that empty space was created on the north side Wellfleet’s Main Street in 1909, when John Swett’s house and several other buildings were consumed in a large fire. While the Barnstable Patriot usually reported such events, no mention was ever made about the fire, nor did two other newspaper databases