Palmer Memorial Hall is located one block off Palmer's downtown Main Street, at the southeast corner of Pleasant and Central Streets. it is a 1-1/2 story red brick building, with a red brick exterior, hip roof, and granite foundation. The front facade is dominated by a projecting gabled pavilion, which houses the main entrances in a pair of similar round-arch recesses with terra cotta decorative elements. Above these in the gable are three tall round-arch windows. The pavilion is flanked on each side by two round-arch windows, above which hip-roof wall dormers rise through the main roof. The building interior was designed for use as a library on the ground floor, and a meeting space on the second floor.[3]
The hall was designed by Robert H. Robertson of New York City, and was built in 1890-91 as a memorial to the city's Civil War dead, a meeting place for the Grand Army of the Republic, and to house the public library. It is the city's best example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style.[3]
Palmer's first library was founded in 1815 as a private subscription library, but it, along with subsequent attempts to maintain a library, failed until 1878. That year, the Young Men's Library Association purchased the collection of a recently failed association and opened a public reading room in a commercial storefront on Central Street. Calls for a permanent collection and building began in the 1880s, along with calls for a war memorial. In 1890, Dr. W.H. Stowe donated land for the building, which was formally dedicated in April 1891.[3][citation needed]
The library association relinquished control of the library to the city in 1963, and it moved into new premises in 1977. The library space now serves as a senior center, and the GAR hall serves as meeting space for the community.[3]
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