Roughan Hall remains one of the few institutional buildings facing City Square, a civic, commercial, and institutional core from the time of Charlestown's 1630 settlement until 1950s urban redevelopment. Vinal's yellow brick Italian-palazzo design expresses the building's multiple functions, and its scale and styling relate to the other nearby institutional structures. The most distinctive interior space was at the top, an elaborately decorated two-story hall with a mezzanine, and a stage used for dances, lectures, and other cultural events for many years by Charlestown social and fraternal organizations. The broad space was supported by the then novel Howe Truss system, which used wood and steel.