Tag:amenity=townhall

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townhall
back to Key:amenity

Description:

The townhall is a building where the administration of a village, town or city is located.

Element: help

Useful combination:

Implies:

Used combinations in:

Summary

Use this for a village, town or city townhall. The townhall is a building known as the village/town hall, but not necessarily used (or having ever been used) for administrative function. Commonly a (UK) village will have a Village Hall used for community events such as fundraising and Discos.

Here is the image:

(A SVG version is also available, but I've not yet found out how to upload SVG files)

<tag k="amenity" v="townhall"/>

--audifahrer 23:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment

I would like to raise one note of caution. Locally, in Baldock, Hitchin and Letchworth Garden City we have Townhalls, and in Ickleford we have a Village Hall, but in none of these cases are these administrative buildings. In Baldock and Letchworth Garden City the Townhalls were once administrative centres but no longer, but in Hitchin and Ickleford, the buildings were never build for administrative purposes, but as community facilities. -- Batchoy 14:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't know that. In germany "townhall" is the translation of "Rathaus". And as I know there's only one "Rathaus" in villages. I couldn't say this for big cities. Perhaps cities have multible townhalls and perhaps also "old" no longer official used townhalls. So how is the building named in your country where the mayor (german: Bürgermeister) sits?--audifahrer 11:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe that's true for villages (wouldn't it be villagehall then?) Government is much bigger nowadays then it was several hundreds of years ago. Thus we have a "old Rathaus" here - e.g. for representation and as a touristic highlight. It may be used e.g. for weddings while there's not necessarily a major's office. There's a "new Rathaus" (which again may be several hundred years old, although it would be newer than the old building), accompanied by a "technical Rathaus" where certain departments are located. BTW there are four majors for different departments (building, school, econonmy, ...), one "Oberbürgermeister" (chief major?) and some successors of majors from former town parts which merged with the town, but still got their old townhall and some kind of special status with a kind of town part major. Thus there may be many different kinds of townhalls within a town. --traut 13:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

In response to Batchoy's concerns, which I also thought about, there is another proposal that started life as Proposed_features/Civic_centre, which caters for administrative centres, leaving town halls to denote, well, town halls. In the UK administrative centres have commonly moved from the town hall into different buildings, but the original buildings retain their name. TomChance 21:22, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I've an addition for the people who mentioned there're several townhalls in a city. If there are several townhalls you could use major=true to tag the townhall where the city major works. But this is a later discussion. For now we simply need a townhall tag.

Vote

I open the vote and approve the proposal. --spaetz 22:06, 25 March 2007 (BST)
I approve the proposal. --andreas99 22:06, 25 March 2007 (BST)
approve: yes, let's have this, with the understanding that it refers (in the UK) to be municipal building known as a "town hall" whether or not the council meetings are held there... Morwen 23:40, 5 April 2007 (BST)
I approve the proposal in the same vein as Morwen, it shouldn't imply that it has any local government function. Leave that for the other proposal (linked above). TomChance 09:37, 6 April 2007 (BST)
I approve the proposal. --Gregoryw 18:05, 21 May 2007 (BST)
I approve the proposal. --Proximacentauri 13:17, 27 May 2007 (BST)
I approve the proposal. --EdoM (Parliamone) 12:29, 1 June 2007 (BST)
I approve the proposal. OlivierB 13:33, 16 October 2007 (BST)
I disapprove the proposal. I feel the icon is not suitable. --traut 13:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)