Another of architect John F. O’Malley’s designs is the Charles E. Shea Senior High School on East Street, in Pawtucket.

The Providence Journal Frieda Squires

PAWTUCKET — In the 1930s, if you wanted to erect a major building in Pawtucket, architect John F. O’Malley was the man to see. Among his eclectic list of accomplishments are Pawtucket City Hall, the former Leroy Theater and what is now Shea High School.

O’Malley retired in 1944, and today few remember his name. But last year, when architect Richard Ventrone needed a decorative design for the Pawtucket River Bridge replacement on Route 95, it was O’Malley’s work that showed him the way.

Ventrone worked with a committee of city residents on how best to embellish the new bridge. They tried a nautilus-like shell to symbolize the river and its bounty, but it didn’t work. They tried moving gears, a symbol of Slater Mill, but federal officials said that would be too distracting to drivers zipping by at 55 mph.

So in search of inspiration, Ventrone walked down the street from Slater Mill to City Hall, designed by O’Malley in 1933. Inspiration hit even before he set foot inside.

On either side of the front steps, an eagle was carved into the stone, standing in profile, a wing swept back proudly.

“It just all fell together rather easily,” Ventrone said. “It’s nice that you’ve got them there.”

So in about two years, when the new bridge opens, cars will whiz past looming stylish art-deco wings that will rise up on either side of the bridge. Sixty five years after O’Malley left Pawtucket, he is still shaping its landscape.

Ventrone’s wings represent more than a riff on the Pawtucket icon. They are the result of city residents looking for any opportunity to revitalize their downtown and a state agency that was willing to listen.

Richard Nazarian Jr., chairman of the Pawtucket Riverfront Commission, said Route 95’s swath through the city was a crime against urban planning, and residents were determined that the new bridge wouldn’t be a repeat offender. When the state Department of Transportation held a forum on the project in early 2008, the issues of traffic flow and safety were overshadowed by questions about how the bridge would look. Much of the city’s revitalization efforts has focused on bringing people to the river, residents said, and an ugly bridge would cripple that.

DOT officials said they were open to changes, as long as they didn’t bust the $110-million budget for the project. The DOT has often changed plans at the suggestion of local residents, agency spokesman Charles St. Martin said. In the early 1990s, a residents committee in Jamestown persuade the agency to separate the east and west lanes of Route 138 with grassy medians instead of Jersey barriers, the state’s bike path designs are regularly adjusted after local input and the DOT is currently consulting with Warwick residents about a plan to rework the traffic pattern in Apponaug, he said.

Dave Fish, the DOT’s managing engineer for bridge design, said the group the agency worked with came up with valuable suggestions. Besides the decorative touches, they suggested an arched bridge rather than a straight girder bridge. Not only did the arch look better, Fish said, it will be cheaper.

The bridge and City Hall have more than motifs in common. The construction of Pawtucket City Hall, begun in 1933, was one of the first projects financed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act, a program that funneled million of dollars into public works projects to revive the nation’s economy during the Great Depression.

The new bridge is being financed as part of President Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus plan, an effort to revive an again-stagnant American economy.

In 1933, O’Malley’s City Hall wasn’t just a building, it was an announcement by the city’s newly elected Democratic administration that it was ready to take — and use — power.

O’Malley was part of that class. Born John F. Foley in New Bedford, Mass., in 1885, his Irish immigrant parents died when he was young; he was raised by his aunt Sabina and her husband, Patrick O’Malley, in Central Falls.

He started out as a draftsman in Providence and for a time worked in Philadelphia before returning to Central Falls. He designed the ballroom at Rhodes on the Pawtucket, in Cranston, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, off Atwells Avenue, and Holy Name of Jesus School, both in Providence.

With the demolition of the palatial 2,700-seat Leroy Theater, in 1997, O’Malley’s surviving masterpiece is Pawtucket City Hall, and it is significant beyond its architecture. It centralized all city government in one place, a new idea in municipal administration.

“This consolidation of city departments … is perhaps symbolic of Mayor Thomas P. McCoy’s iron grip on virtually all aspects of Pawtucket’s city government in the 1930s,” according to the building’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

Ventrone said Pawtucket’s City Hall is unlike any other in the state. There is no single overwhelming element, he said, but geometric themes that are repeated throughout the building. It has circular patterns on something as minor as the grate over an air vent; embedded in the underside of the stairwell to the second floor are a pair of two-foot-square bas-reliefs with stylized workmen representing “Achievement” and “Activity”; one is holding a small sun in his outstretched arms, the other is pulling mightily on a lever.

And then there is the 209-foot tower. It is hollow except for the steel beams that support it.

“It serves absolutely no function other than to define space and say ‘This is important,’ ” Ventrone said. “It is simply something that marks a spot on the planet. That’s amazing — and it talks about the town. They could have used that money elsewhere. It speaks about the people at the time, who knew what they were doing and wanted it to be important.”

As for O’Malley, “Every architect wants to have something, that building that’s a defining work. And I think that, probably for him, he knew that this was probably it,” Ventrone said. “You build theaters, they get demolished. City Halls don’t often get demolished.”A new bridge by the numbers

•The current span over the Pawtucket River was built 50 years ago and designed to carry about 60,000 cars daily, instead of the 162,000 that currently use it daily. Here’s a look at what it will take to build a replacement:

Total cost: $110 million

Planned start of construction: Spring 2010

Estimated completion of construction: Spring 2012

jhill@projo.com