Neuwied never had a town hall as a stately or even magnificent building in the centre of the town. In the first difficult decades of its existence, the young town was too poor or perhaps too modest to afford anything of the kind. Until the formation of the first magistrate in 1680/81, the count's government took care of the town's affairs. Between 1699 and 1716, the first town hall was built on a "burnt down square" at the corner of Mittelstraße and Rheinstraße, which differed from simple town houses only in its particularly high wine cellar, double staircase and double windows. This house came into private ownership around 1800. In 1811, the town acquired a larger corner house on Markt- and Engerser Straße directly opposite the market church as a new "town, school and guard house". In 1863, the house was replaced by a new three-storey building. A brother of the reigning Count Alexander zu Wied, the later "General Wied", had what was for a long time the largest building in the city built on Pfarrstraße after 1740 and donated it to the city in 1765 for the care of the poor and orphans. As a social institution, however, the "Herrenhaus" proved to be a financial failure, and the city fathers leased it out in 1773 and sold it in 1784 to the Remy & Barensfeld company, who processed the black plate waste from the Rasselsteinwerk into enamelware here. In 1871, the city received the house back from the last heiress of the now defunct company, along with the company grounds, as a bequest. In 1877, the town council moved in and had to share the building with the secondary school until 1912. The way it was rebuilt and modernised to suit the taste of the times is how it still looks today.