I was pretty neurotic when I started my courthouse project- I’m shy, and I was afraid of being confronted by someone who saw me as suspicious. I’d read horror stories about real photographers escorted away from government buildings by apprehensive local officials. It took about three years, but it finally happened in LaGrange, Indiana during my second trip there. Sort of.

We’ll get to that, but first things first: The LaGrange County Courthouse is my mental archetype for a courthouse, and it has been ever since my dad frequently drove us past it towards his house nearby. Every time I see a fictional courthouse in a movie or on TV, I instantly compare it to this one. Red brick? Mansard roof? Clock tower? Dome? The Hill Valley courthouse from Back to the Future features none of that stuff. Okay- it’s got a clock. Courthouses in To Kill a Mockingbird, Bruce Almighty, and Ghost Whisperer don’t make the grade either, which isn’t surprising, I guess, since they all used the same set. 

Maybe Universal Studios should ghost-whisper T.J. Tolan back from the grave to design that area of the backlot, since he was responsible for LaGrange’s beautiful courthouse, as well as Rockville’s, Warsaw’s, and at least four others around the midwest. Of his portfolio, the LaGrange County Courthouse stands out due to its unique design- two stories, rectangular building features four corner pavilions capped with their own mansard roofs and dormer windows. A low, hipped roof covers the rest of the courthouse. It supports a clock tower that rises 125 feet above the ground and contains the original, 1878 bell and clock works². Of the other courthouses in the state, I’d say that its closest match is Elkhart County’s in nearby Goshen, which features similar elements of Georgian styling. Maybe I just mentally associate the two since I used to see them both nearly every other weekend in quick succession. 

I’d originally gone to LaGrange County -and Goshen- on the first trip of my rebooted project back in 2015; they were the fifth and sixth courthouses I poked around. It was summer and the oppressive foliage of each courthouse square made getting photos of the buildings themselves especially difficult.

The current courthouse replaced a frame courthouse in Lima, as well as a second frame courthouse erected in LaGrange when the county seat moved in 1843³. Although it’s predominantly brick, the courthouse has a limestone foundation separated from the walls by a sandstone sill. Only a few, minor, modifications have been made over the years. Exterior entrances to public bathrooms were added on the north and south sides of the courthouse at some point, as well as a small storage area that’s been cribbed to the basement stairs. Aside from being covered in trees, the courtyard also features a replica of the original bandstand. A decorative iron fence has long since been removed from the square, as has a windmill originally used to provide water the courthouse⁴. 

The entire square is extraordinarily picturesque, actually. Brick streets line three sides of it (Detroit Street carries IN-9 and thus is asphalt), and the western edges of the square feature real-life, honest-to-God hitching posts for the county’s vast Amish constituency (37% of county residents are of the fellowship⁵). Charming and quaint as it was, I must admit that I was quickly exposed to the practical disadvantages of brick streets used in conjunction with transportation by horse-and-buggy. All those keister cakes have to go somewhere, which seemed to be the space between each brick. I’m not sure if tuck-pointing can be done on a road, but it would not have shocked me if Miller’s Food & Drug down the road was out of nasal clothespins.

I took photos of fourteen courthouses that day. When I finally got home to review what I’d taken, I realized that I’d only shot twelve of the courthouse itself, which wasn’t a lot to choose from. I also found out that none of my photos documented the building as well as I’d intended to. Photos I took in Goshen had the same problem due to the surrounding trees, so I decided that I’d have to go back to both.

It took me a while- three years! The thing is that, I didn’t want to go back and do retakes while there were other courthouses in the state I could be discovering instead. I finally made it back during the waning winter months of 2018, when I intended to redo my photos, in LaGrange and Goshen while there weren’t any trees to obstruct the buildings before I nabbed some more in Elkhart. I made it to LaGrange first, got out of my car, and began to traipse around the square, looking for the angles I’d missed.

That’s when it happened: suddenly, a voice called out to me from behind. “Beautiful building,” a woman said. 

I was a little caught off-guard, my awkwardness in social settings notwithstanding. I’d been to every historic courthouse in the state by then, and no one had bothered as much as to say hello. I whirled around. “Yeah, it sure is,” I belched out.

The curious bystander wasn’t a leery cop or a mistrustful prosecutor. It was a benign old woman out walking her dog. She asked if I was from around there, and I said no, although I mentioned that I had lived in Elkhart County for a time. I explained the project in its most briefest terms, and that I’d been here already but was taking more photos. “You know who has a really gorgeous courthouse,” she said. “Van Wert, in Ohio.”

That’s another T.J. Tolan design, and I’d actually been there literally the day before. “I was actually there yesterday,” I said. “The same guy designed both of these.” 

She sort of slightly smiled and did a half-nod, before turning around to check on her dog. I have trouble remembering that most people aren’t as enthused about the family tree of midwestern courthouses as I am, and she seemed eager to leave my nerdy ass alone. I sighed in relief at the harmless old lady who was mercifully not a SWAT team rappelling down from the golden clock tower dome as I’d expected. I didn’t even have to use my long-practiced justification that my photos were for a school project (they weren’t). Good thing, too-I was nearing thirty then, and that’d have been even more fishy. 

I didn’t hustle to make it out of LaGrange as quickly as I did on my previous trip: it seemed as if the impacted slush and ice on the brick streets made plowing away all the horse crap a lot easier than during the summer when it’d get ingrained in the joints. I took a minute or so to circle the block and really appreciate the view that the leafless trees offered me. Other courthouses might be a closer fit to the profile of geopolitical scheming so common in early state politics, and others might have more interesting stories. Others might be more opulent, and still others might truly wallow in their practicality. At the end of the day, they’re all just places to get married, get sued, or pay taxes. But to me, LaGrange County’s courthouse still represents the most archetypical of any found in our state, and will remain my mental model of what a courthouse should look like. Even if I have to answer an old lady’s questions about it from time to time. 

TL;DR
Lagrange County (pop. 37,128, 42/92)
Lagrange (pop. 2,625).
5/92 photographed
Built: 1878
Cost: $71,675 ($1.83 million in 2016)
Architect: Thomas & Brentwood S. Tolan
Style: Georgian/Second Empire
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 125 feet
Current use: county offices and courts
Photographed 8/15/15 and 2/18/18

Sources Cited
1 Enyart, David. “Architects” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. July 21, 2018.
2 National Register of Historic Places, LaGrange County Courthouse, LaGrange, LaGrange County, Indiana, National Register # 80000042.
3 Counties of LaGrange and Noble, Indiana: Historical and Biographical. F.A. Battey & Company: Chicago.1882.
4 Ford, Ira. History of Northeast Indiana. The Lewis Publishing Company: Chicago. 1920.
5 “DP03 SELECTED ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS – 2006-2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates”. United States Census Bureau. Web. Retrieved July 21, 2018.