The Model School is just one of Sligo's 19th-century buildings which has recently undergone restoration. The Townhall (now rather grandiosely renamed "City Hall") has also just emerged from a lengthy refurbishment, conducted by Dublin architectural practice Gilroy McMahon which, in a fashion similar to the arts centre, not only overhauled but also added to the old structure. The Townhall is one of the best reflections of the economic boom and social confidence experienced throughout the whole country during the post-Famine period. It was designed by Dublin-based architect William Hague in 1865 and completed nine years later. Somewhat in the style of Woodward and Deane's work, the building can best be classified as Lombardic Romanesque thanks to its freshly cleaned polychromatic arched window surrounds. The clock tower, however, is more gothic in character, a typical example of Victorian design eclecticism. Gilroy McMahon's work in the main block has opened up the entrance hall by clearing away a number of small rooms to one side. The effect is to provide more space for the building's most dramatic feature - a top-lit staircase which boasts wonderfully elaborate wrought-iron decoration. By introducing a mezzanine into offices at the back of the building, the architects have also managed to increase the amount of floorspace.
The two other substantial alterations to the Townhall are the division of the upperstorey chamber into three spaces, one of them serving as a council chamber for the local authority - an intervention which cannot be considered entirely satisfactory because of the break-up of the original coved ceiling and the room's line of windows - and the erection of a slender, new service block along one side of the building which, while entirely different in style from the main block is nonetheless sympathetic to its older neighbour. Elsewhere in the town, another important building, the Courthouse, is in the throes of being restored, the job being handled - as with the Model Arts Centre - by McCullough Mulvin Architects. Dating from the late 1870s and originally designed by Rawson Carroll, this is yet another historically significant work. As architectural historian Jeremy Williams has noted, unlike the majority of Irish courthouses which take the form of classical temples, the one in Sligo adopted the gothic style. Three houses on a sloping street were incorporated into Carroll's structure, the interior of which boasts an impressive top-lit, galleried entrance hall and two courtrooms still containing their original, and vaguely Tudorbethan, furniture and fittings. Once work has finished on this site, according to Sean Martin, Sligo Corporation's executive architect, there are plans to extend the town's library and to create a new county museum. At the moment, these two services are housed, respectively, in a mid 19th-century gothic former Congregationalist church and its adjoining manse. While Sligo town suffers from an abundance of bad buildings - the housing estates on its outskirts continue to be an unforgivable blight on the landscape and new work in the centre includes a series of apartment blocks along the banks of the Garvoge which manages to ignore the river entirely - it is encouraging that the local authority has chosen to care for at least some elements of its architectural heritage.