1. A municipal building containing the public offices, court-house, and TOWN HALL, and in some continental towns the official residence of the chief magistrate. Cf. F. hôtel de ville; Ger. stadthaus. In England now commonly called TOWN HALL.
1530. Palsgr., 282/1. Towne house, pretoire.
1550. Bp. Hooper, Serm. Jonas, v. 106. Certeyne pictures in the town house at Basyll.
1579. in W. H. Turner, Sel. Rec. Oxford (1880), 403. Suche arrowes as the towne howsse nowe hathe.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit. (1637), 396. The greater part of the Towne [Buckingham] beareth North, wherein standeth the Towne-house.
1678. Lond. Gaz., No. 1287/3. The Burghers of Ghent have been commanded to bring in their Arms to the Town-House.
1701. [see TOWN HALL].
1756–7. trans. Keyler’s Trav. (1760), III. 333. Placentia. On the area before the town-house are two bronze equestrian statues.
1765. T. Hutchinson, Hist. Mass., I. iii. 381. A long declaration was read from the balcony … of the town-house.
1773. Hist. Brit. Dom. in N. Amer., III. ii. 71. The city-hall, or town-house, is a strong brick building, two stories in heighth.
1897. Whittier, Last Walk Autumn, xxi. The painted, shingly town-house where The freeman’s vote for Freedom falls.
1896. Barrie, Sent. Tommy, i. 3. If you jest see’d the Thrums townhouse!
b. U.S. (a) An almshouse, a workhouse. (b) A town prison (Cent. Dict., 1891).
1889. Farmer, Americanisms, s.v. Town, Townhouse,… in Connecticut, an almshouse.
2. (Town house.) A house in a town; a residence in town, as distinguished from a country house.
1825. T. Hook, Sayings, Ser. II. Man of Many Fr., I. 284. I have no other town house to offer.
1862. H. Marryat, Year in Sweden, II. 393. The monks possessed a town-house in Söfde.
1886. C. E. Pascoe, London of To-day, xxii. (ed. 3), 211. Where now the maze of little courts and side streets extends to the Thames Embankment, there stood, centuries ago, the town-houses of the bishops, the ambassadors, and the powerful nobles.
1888. Saintsbury, Marlborough, x. 203. Tradition … assigns the fine Georgian house now used as the judge’s lodgings [Oxford] as having been built by the Duke for a town house.
