Hoosiers are lucky to have so many historic courthouses in Indiana. But that’s not to say that keeping the venerable structures around has been easy: old courthouses across the state have been subject to wrecking balls, ugly renovations, tornadoes, and even bombings. The most common danger has generally been the threat of fire. Many of the oldest were built before fireproofing existed, and historians have documented at least 42 conflagrations inside our courthouses. Of those 42 fires, 18 resulted in the major loss of county records. 26 totally destroyed county courthouses here1.
Well, make that 26.5 courthouses ruined by fire. On the icy morning of December 27, 1934, Porter County residents in Valparaiso woke to discover that most of their fifty-one year old courthouse was gone, ravaged by a blaze that started shortly after midnight2. Firefighters finally managed to put out the fire after eleven hours, leaving the building smoking, frozen, and resembling a ‘volcanic iceberg’ according to the local paper3.
The inferno was first noticed shortly after midnight by a policeman who saw what looked like lightning in the second-floor courtroom. By the time firefighters made it there, six-foot flames were visible through the big, arched windows of the building’s attic. The fire was out of control! Breaking through a locked door to the building’s top story, they discovered that the situation was much worse than initially expected. Firefighters had been called to the building twice in the previous months, when a fan shorted out in the ceiling of the courtroom, and when a faulty light fixture ignited in the judge’s chambers. A local contractor offered to fix the building’s faulty wiring for free with the county only paying $500 for materials, but officials demurred.
This wasn’t a lightbulb or fan, though. It was an inferno! Everyone had long known that a major fire would devastate the courthouse. Its heavy timber girders, two feet thick and seventy-five feet long in places, wouldn’t be a match for any source of combustion. The state fire marshal’s office confirmed as much five years earlier when it condemned the building. Again, noncommittal officials did nothing to fix the issues at hand.
Overmatched Valparaiso firefighters stood down and called on departments in LaPorte and Gary –both twenty miles away- for assistance. Meanwhile, the heat, smoke, and flames were growing. Because the fire had spread through the building’s walls, attempts to shoot water through its windows weren’t helping. With help at hand, they ended up concentrating on the recorder’s office in the northeast corner of the first floor, managed to extinguish the flames, and saved the county records stored there.
Putting out a fire is an exhausting effort, and it’s even harder when the temperature is -12 degrees with a chilly gale that fanned the flames. Firefighters were dropping left and right, numb from exhaustion and cold. They weren’t equipped to handle a blaze the size of a 16-story building, and neither was the city’s infrastructure. Insufficient water pressure kept the firefighters and volunteers who stepped in to relieve them from extinguishing anything above the third floor. The roof continued to burn unchecked as it made its way to the clock tower. One firefighter swore he heard the gong of the bell as it dropped earthbound through the devastated timber floors4.
As the smoke cleared, residents of Valparaiso milled around the square in shock the next morning. The courthouse still stood, frozen and smoldering, as did the 168-foot-tall clock tower. Unfortunately, the damage was so significant that it took commissioners two years to finalize plans to build anew as they holed up in temporary offices in the building’s basement.
To that end, they hired Walter Scholer5 to rehabilitate the building. The courthouse was insured, bonds were floated, and Scholar made use of what he could from the 1883 structure. Work commenced, and it was completed three years later in 1937.
Today, you wouldn’t know that there’d been a disastrous fire based on a cursory glance at the courthouse. It appears to be in remarkably good shape and competitive among its neoclassical peers found around the state. The limestone structure extends three stories from a raised basement, and the primary north and south elevations feature flat porticos supported by six columns. The first two floors feature arched windows and terminate at a wide, stone cornice. The third story is slightly recessed, with rectangular windows that frame a central clock.
A closer inspection reveals some telling signs that something big happened to the building. For starters, what good are the monumental porticos without a big set of limestone stairs to reach them? And why are the main entrances at the raised basement so underwhelming in comparison? Well, the old building did feature massive staircases leading to a main entrance on the first floor, but the renovation after the fire removed them. To replace the enormous stairs, smaller, more accessible entrances were carved into the basement6. The process created a new first floor.
The third story of the courthouse looks a little off, too. It, and the projecting portion of the second level just above the porticos were added by Scholer to replace what had been lost in the fire. In the aftermath, it was clear that the tower had to go, along with the building’s hipped roof, statuary, and enormous arched windows that let light into the attic and originally alerted firefighters to the severity of the inferno.
When I first started researching the reconstructed Porter County Courthouse in depth, I was shocked at how lazy county officials seemed in not attempting to rectify the electrical issues that led to its destruction. It hit me halfway through writing this that we still have a historic courthouse in Valparaiso, and I appreciate that county officials didn’t tear the whole thing down. Despite its extensive alterations, the Porter County Courthouse still stands proudly, almost eighty-four years after a fire nearly claimed it.
TL;DR
65/92 photographed
Built: 1885, decapitated 1934 after fire
Cost: $125,000 ($3.32 million in 2016)
Architect: John C. Cochrane
Style: Second Empire/Neoclassical
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 3.5 stories; 168 feet, pre-1934.
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 3/19/16
Sources Cited
1 Enyart, David. “Porter County” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. Retrieved April 8, 2018.
2 “Courthouse Burned at Valparaiso” The Muncie Evening Press [Muncie] December 27,1934: 3. Print.
3 “Valpo Courthouse Burned” The Times [Munster] December 27, 1934: 1. Print.
4 “Courthouse Fire 40 Years Ago” The Vidette-Messenger [Valparaiso] December 27,1974: 9. Print.
5 “Looking Backward” ” The Vidette-Messenger [Valparaiso] May 23,1956: 9. Print.
6 Neeley, George E.; City of Valparaiso, A Pictorial History; G. Bradley Publishing, Inc.; St. Louis, Missouri; 1989
