No curfew siren during City Hall construction

Whitefish evenings will be eerily silent for the next few years.

The traditional 10 p.m. curfew siren will go quiet beginning this week when demolition and subsequent construction of a new City Hall gets underway.

City Manager Chuck Stearns says the siren won’t re-emerge until the tower on the new City Hall is built and operational. Construction is expected to take up to two years.

Use of the siren dates back to 1919, when it wailed at 9 p.m. A new ordinance approved in October 1944 moved the time to 10 p.m.

The siren went off at all times of the day when it was used to alert volunteer fire fighters. Today, Whitefish has a mostly paid, full-time ambulance and fire department.