Sandwich City Hall and Opera House

The Second Empire brick building anchoring downtown Sandwich has served as both city hall and live performance venue since eighteen seventy-nine. Architects Enos and Israel Doan designed it for ten thousand dollars, approved by bond issue, though a two-thousand-dollar overrun required a second vote. City government occupies the ground floor; the opera house on the second floor has remained active continuously for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

The town itself carries a name from far away. When the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad came through in the eighteen fifties, John Wentworth, a founder of the community, chose to name the settlement after his hometown of Sandwich, New Hampshire. The city was incorporated in eighteen fifty-nine. Sandwich City Hall and Opera House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-nine.