History
The Town Hall was originally Merchant House, wchich was rebuilt in the end of the 14th century to serve as the seat of the municipal authorities. To the east of it was added a market hall. The first mention of it comes from 1409, when the town residents decided to erect a building called by them “theatrum”. At the turn of the 15th and 16th century it was enlarged by the combination of both parts and by the construction of a new storey. The town hall was often destroyed, so it was repeatedly repaired and rebuilt. Such actions were taken after the destruction of the Thirty Years War, at the end of the 17th century, and also in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The last major renovation of the town hall was in the nineties of the twentieth century.
Architecture
The town hall was built of bricks on a rectangular plan, with two floors topped with an attic covered with a gable roof. The entrance to the building was placed in the eastern, gable wall and decorated with a Gothic, pointed, moulded and stepped portal. The triangular gable of the western facade with tracery decorations and pinnacles on edges became a distinctive element. The original windows in the longer elevations were relatively small, closed with pointed arches and triangularly. Inside, the cellars were covered with barrel vaults, and in the ground floor there was an entrance vestibule topped with a cross-rib vault in two bays. It was located between two larger rooms and a staircase. On the first floor, among other things, there was a representative room with a net vault.
Current state
High cellars with barrel vaults, a vestibule with a rib vault and a former courtroom with net vaults with Renaissance polychrome from the 16th century have remained from the original layout. The facades have been pierced with early modern windows, but there are still several original, bricked up Gothic windows, and especially the magnificent entrance portal.
bibliography:
Pawlak R., Polska. Zabytkowe ratusze, Warszawa 2003.
Pilch J., Kowalski S., Leksykon zabytków Pomorza Zachodniego i ziemi lubuskiej, Warszawa 2012
Website trzcinsko-zdroj.pl, Ratusz Miejski.