Glasgow City Hall is located at 100 Market Street, Glasgow, MO 65254.
Phone: 660‑338‑2377.
Glasgow city limits lie partly within Chariton County.
Glasgow [1], situated on the bluffs near the confluence of the Missouri and Chariton Rivers, was conceived as a commercial center for Howard County in the Boonslick region of Missouri. It was placed to take advantage of the Missouri River as a highway between established markets to the east and the opening of new lands to the west. Laid out in 1836, the town thrived, succeeding where three earlier and less well-sited towns in the vicinity had not. Like its predecessors, Glasgow was founded and developed by people whose vital interests lay in trade. Appropriately, given this background, Glasgow today continues to center around its commercial district, whose architecture stresses the historic importance of trade to the community, while it also demonstrates the growth and stylistic change the town has experienced throughout its history.
Glasgow was organized by a company of proprietors who purchased the town site from Talton Turner and James Earickson. Turner and Earickson were among the proprietors, along with Richard Earickson, James Head, Stephen Donohoe, William Swinney, John Aull (or Bull), John Nicolds (or Nichols), Thomas Cockerill, Thomas White, William Dunnica, Joseph Blackwell and James Glasgow. The new town was named for the last of these men, who, with his brother William and John Aull, had played a significant role in the mercantile life of Chariton since 1819, and had begun to exploit the trade potential of the Santa Fe Trail by the later 1820s. James Glasgow's business interests eventually led him to move to St. Louis, but his name and his commercial focus lived on in the central Missouri town. Like James Glasgow, the other proprietors were generally experienced at doing business in this region. They chose a site that was healthful and beautiful, but also well situated on the river in the midst of the growing richness of the surrounding countryside. This last characteristic was of particular importance, for the proprietors' principal purpose in founding the new town was to facilitate trade.