Tuesday visitors to the new Wake Forest Town Hall were startled and then pleased to see the transformation of the former planning department building next door. The exterior bricks had been painted a brown color closely matching the brick on the town hall, and the window and door lintels and sills had been painted a contrasting cream – all over the Fourth of July weekend.
          The side entrance to the building has been incorporated into the plaza leading from Brooks Street to the main town hall entrance.
          The building was constructed in 1909, the same year the town was rechartered as the Town of Wake Forest. It originally housed the town offices, the police department, the jail, the fire department and the fire truck on the first floor while the Recorder’s Court (the forerunner of today’s District Court) was upstairs. Local Judge Donald Gulley presided over the weekly court for years, and people who lived in the nearby houses, now gone, remember hearing jail prisoners asking for favors or talking to friends.
          The one-story addition was built by Wake Electric in 1940 and served as the cooperative’s office until the new building on Wait Avenue was completed in 1950. After that, it became the town business office. The bay housing the fire truck was converted in the 1970s as an office for the first town administrator, Julian Prosser. The town fire department had moved to a converted gas station on South White Street next to the rural fire department in the 1960s. The town’s fire station is now home to the Wake Forest Chamber of Commerce.