Warren County Courthouse (Indiana)

History

At the first Warren County seat of Warrenton, a log house owned (and occupied) by Enoch Farmer was used for general court and county purposes. When the county seat was moved to Williamsport, a log house belonging to the town's proprietor, William Harrison, served as the courthouse starting in July 1829. In 1832, plans were made for a new building, and in July of that year the construction bid was won by E. W. Jones and Seth Flowers. The new building was to be made of brick, 40 ft square and 23 ft high, and was to be completed by August 1833; but various problems delayed this until mid-1834. The cost of construction was about $2000. In 1835 the building was strengthened and improved.

In 1870 a specially-appointed committee determined that the old building was unsafe, and plans were begun to replace it; but opposition to the plan delayed progress until early 1871. The plans called for a new brick building to be constructed in what is now known as "Old Town", the original portion of Williamsport that was on the shores of the Wabash River. The firm of Hays and Evans of Bloomington, Illinois was awarded the job with a bid of $48,400. The county did not have sufficient funds for the project, so $10,000 worth of county bonds were issued. The new courthouse was accepted in December 1872.

In 1886 it was torn down and rebuilt as the third courthouse on the current site, in the newer portion of town that had developed because of the railroad. This courthouse had a 155-foot tower. Early on the morning of Sunday, January 20, 1907, the building caught fire and was largely destroyed, though most of the records were saved.{{cite book

The current courthouse was designed by J. W. Royer of Urbana, Illinois and was constructed by Frank Jahn of Champaign, Illinois and L. N. Cope of Decatur, Illinois at a cost of $115,000. Following the fire of January 1907, construction of the new building was under way by October, during the term of Governor Frank Hanly. It was built primarily of stone, with stairs made of iron and marble.{{cite book

Notes

References

References

1. "Announcements and actions on properties for the National Register of Historic Places, March 28, 2008". National Park Service.
2. Williamson, Samuel H. (April 2010). ''Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present''. [http://www.measuringworth.com MeasuringWorth]. Calculations made using Nominal GDP Per Capita, a measure of capital intensivity, using "the 'average' per-person output of the economy in the prices of the current year." This is a measure of the amount of capital and volume of labor required to reproduce the work over varying production methods, but assuming that money represents a proportion of the economy.
3. Goodspeed, Weston A.. (1883). "Counties of Warren, Benton, Jasper and Newton, Indiana". F. A. Battey and Company.
4. Eliza Steelwater. (September 2007). "Indiana State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Research Database (SHAARD)". Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology.