“Bullies don’t like to fight, son. They like to win.” 

The poet Kwame Alexander wrote those words in his graphic novel Booked, a story about a twelve-year-old soccer player named Nick who struggles to navigate life after his parents’ divorce. Who among us was twelve and wasn’t bullied for one stupid reason or another? If you were, it’s time to pool our funds and buy a jacket to send to Madison County. We may have to bring the tent and awning company in on this one.

Only eight of Indiana’s ninety-two counties no longer have a historic courthouse. This state has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to them! Despite that, we know that it’s always the outliers that get picked on. In that vein, the Madison County Courthouse in Anderson has gotten the short end of the stick from architecture buffs ever since it was completed in 1972.

It’s not like all of Indiana’s historic courthouses are unique. As a matter of fact, many are actually far from it. John Gaddis, Elmer Dunlap, and E.O. Falls all replicated their designs. George Bunting did too, including the 1882 Madison County Courthouse demolished in the early 1970s to make way for the county’s modern government center. Despite its absence, fans of architecture can still appreciate its spirit by driving an hour northwest to Frankfort to see the Clinton County Courthouse. It’s a mirror image of the one in Anderson if you trade the limestone for red brick.

As in Clinton County, the previous Madison County Courthouse was a great example of the Second Empire style translated through a homespun, Hoosier lens. Unfortunately, by the 1970s, it was clear that the building in Anderson had to come down. The reason for its demise was purely practical: Between 1880 and 1960, Clinton County’s population grew by 7,293 people -good for a 28.9% per the U.S. Census. On the other hand, Madison County’s swelled by a monstrous 98,292 people over the same timeframe, good for an increase of nearly 190%.

Correspondingly, Madison County officials realized that they needed more room to conduct official business as early as 1955. That’s the year they authorized a study to explore several different possibilities of increasing the space that the courthouse offered¹. Two years later, a $1.5 million bond was floated to construct an addition, an annex, or an entire new courthouse². The need was there, but residents didn’t quite see it yet. They voted it down.

The situation was bad, almost like a children’s game. Have you ever played Sardines? It’s a version of Hide-and-Seek. Once the seekers locate the hider, they join the conspiracy by stuffing themselves into the same hiding spot like the eponymous fish. The hideaway gets more and more cramped and giggly as the loser eventually finds everyone crammed into a coat closet or sub-basement!

Imagine playing that game with a hundred exasperated bureaucrats in a cramped, rotting building and you’ll have an idea of what the old courthouse was like. Unfortunately, the loser was Madison County as a whole.

A variety of county offices were scattered around downtown Anderson in rented quarters, but officials forced to work at the courthouse were in a bad way too. Employees of the township assessor’s office were forced to work in the third floor stairwell. Others were relegated to hallways or overcrowded alcoves while important records were stacked wherever there was room. Vital documents often overflowed into the building’s halls³.

The courthouse wasn’t just too small, though- it was dangerous. If a fire started, the staircase the auditor used was the only means of escape for people on all three floors. Exposed wiring, switchboxes, electrical conduit, and pipes overtook the structure’s historic décor and monopolized its ceilings. Outside, the foundation was breaking away from the rest of the courthouse. Plants brazenly grew in the cracks. Two sets of monumental stairways were closed after people tripped and filed suit. The attic was full of dead birds, feathers, and tons and tons of guano⁴.

Officials in Madison County jealously watched as counties around the state built new courthouses. In 1962, they traveled to Floyd County to tour its new City-County Building and returned impressed⁵. Seven years later, they attended the 1969 open house for Delaware County’s new courthouse in Muncie⁶.  Although their clock tower no longer displayed the same time on all four clock faces⁷, officials eventually realized that it was time to act: By June of 1972, the old courthouse was no more. A gaping hole in the city square soon became home to a modern government center that a modern Madison County could be proud of.

$4 million (about $24 million today) bought Madison County a lot of courthouse. At 65,000 square feet, the new structure finally provided enough room for all the ersatz county offices sprinkled around the city⁸. A few vocal residents spoke up in protest that the courthouse didn’t match the concrete veneer of the recently-completed Anderson City Hall, but the Madison County Government Center was an attractive building that featured brown bricks and bronzed windows oddly modeled after the Standard Oil Company Research Center complex in Naperville, Illinois⁹. 

Officials were finally satisfied with their new workplace, but there was trouble brewing from deep within the building’s walls. In 1982, people began to notice bricks shearing off of it. A study determined that a faulty mortar additive was to blame, so officials scrambled to fix the problem by covering the damaged walls with glass paneling. Those glass panels give the courthouse its contemporary appearance today.

Hindsight is 20-20, and the loss of so much brick led the building to be structurally questionable and perhaps as dangerous as its predecessor,. Commissioners were forced to add additional fortifications to prevent the building from toppling in the wind¹⁰! Thankfully, the Madison County Government Center still stands tall without a stylistic peer in the state’s courthouse portfolio.

The modern Madison County Government Center echoes traditional designs in places. Three brick spikes punctuate the building’s roofline and feature clock faces. One has a bell, and those elements echo the clock towers that featured so prominently in old courthouse blueprints. Echoing the days of a common public square, a landscaped common area sits under the courthouse’s cantilevered mass. Moreover, the landscaping of the building itself prominently displays the cornerstone of its 1885 courthouse on its northwest side.

One thing I’ve always loved about Indiana’s historic courthouses is the sense of permanence they imply through their scale and design. Madison County’s does too, albeit in a different way: while other courthouses across the state may be more majestic, I can’t think of any that reflect their enduring presence more literally than this one! The mirror-like walls of the courthouse frame its changing environs in a way that can’t be matched by the brick or stone walls of a historic structure.

Although it wasn’t designed this way, the Madison County Courthouse is an active participant in the community. It assures us that no matter how much times may change, we can rely on an ideal of our government to strive to uphold the most honorable ideals- at least ideally. I pass the Madison County Government Center nearly every day on my way to work. It might represent a time and place that, now, is as foreign as the era of its predecessor’s construction, but it’s indicative of a community that was on the move sixty years ago. Like it or not, the building is an important part of Indiana’s courthouse history.

TL;DR
Madison County (pop. 130,482, 13/92)
Anderson (pop. 55,670).
25/92 photographed
Built: 1972, remodeled in 1983.
Cost: $4 million ($24 million today)
Architect: Johnson, Ritchart & Assoc.
Style: Modern
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 4 stories
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 8/19/15

Sources Cited
1 “Council Approves Funds; Courthouse Plan Studied” The Anderson Herald [Anderson]. May 13, 1955: 1. Print.
2 “County Board Seeks $1,500,000 Bond Issue for New Courthouse” The Anderson Herald [Anderson]. October 16, 1957: 1. Print.
3 “Isn’t it time you did something about your Madison County Courthouse?” The Anderson Herald [Anderson]. February 24, 1966: 10. Print
4 “County Attorney Answers Questions On Dilemma At The Courthouse” The Anderson Herald [Anderson]. June 3, 1969: 1. Print.
5 “City-County Building” The Anderson Daily Bulletin [Anderson]. July 21, 1962: 4. Print.
6 “Delaware County Celebrates, Madison County Waits” The Anderson Herald [Anderson]. September 7, 1969: 1. Print
7 “Old Courthouse- Before the New Wore Off” The Anderson Daily Bulletin [Anderson]. September 21, 1973: 45. Print.
8 “New Government Center” The Anderson Herald [Anderson]. March 28, 1972: 4. Print.
9 “Courthouse Plans Are Unchanged” The Anderson Herald [Anderson]. May 13, 1972: 1. Print.
10 “Update on county litigation” The Call-Leader [Elwood]. December 29, 1984: 1. Print.