Commissioners in Union County, Ohio -named so due to its formation from segments of Franklin, Delaware, Logan, and Madison counties- chose Toledo architect David W. Gibbs to design the original iteration of the current courthouse. Gibbs was one of Ohio’s most prolific architects of public buildings, and he designed five courthouses in the state, along with two more in Michigan.
Despite the grandeur of his courthouses, Gibbs’ crowning architectural achievement was the 146-foot-tall Wyoming State Capitol completed in 1917, twenty-eight years after his final courthouse1. That’s quite a delay for a practicing architect, and it’s because Gibbs was a busy man! In 1889, he moved to an unsettled part of Indian territory to stake his claim during the Oklahoma Land Run2.
One of 10,000 homesteaders to settle in present-day Oklahoma City, Gibbs established a fashionable ice cream parlor that featured the area’s only piano. While Gibbs was out in the boondocks, Congress passed an act that enabled the recently-established Oklahoma Territory to legally authorize cities and counties. Gibbs was appointed chairman of a board of trustees that organized Oklahoma City’s first election on August 9, 1890. Today, officials recognize him as the town’s fourth mayor after he served a perfunctory term of not quite two full months3.
David Gibbs was a fascinating guy. Born in Massachusetts, he moved to Ohio to pursue architecture. Then he moved to Oklahoma to be a mayor and ice cream man and near the end of his days, he came back to Ohio, where he died right after finishing the Wyoming State Capitol. As I said, the man was busy! So much so, in fact, that he tended to economize his architectural practice by reusing his designs.
The Union County Courthouse is nearly identical to Henry County’s in Napoleon from its south and east sides. Aside from the materials and finish, the buildings are practically twins! Take a quick walk around the square, though, and you’ll see that the comparison ends at the courthouse’s northwest front. There, a three-story Justice Center addition, designed by Meacham & Apel4, branches off at a weird angle. I’ll admit to harboring a general distaste for the modern additions that grace many classic courthouses, but I’m coming around on this one.
Gibbs’ original Union County Courthouse features a brick exterior with cut stone accents and a galvanized iron tower and trim. Both his courthouses in Napoleon and Marysville feature mansard roofs with pyramidal corners, along with stone porticos on squat pilasters that feature central sculptures of a flag5.
Naturally, the most prominent feature of both courthouses is their clock towers. They rise 168 feet skyward, and Union County’s is capped by a ten-foot tall Lady Justice statue6. The original Howard & Co. clock from Boston was wound by the courthouse’s janitor until 1942 when a rusty cable snapped. A weight broke through the skylight of the building’s rotunda and nearly beaned a court reporter. The clock has since been upgraded to run on electricity7.
Inside, the courtrooms feature twenty-four images of unique sites in Union County. Before the building was expanded, it was renovated and rededicated in the mid-1990s during a project that added ADA access, conference rooms, a bulletproof judge’s bench, and a new holding cell for juvenile offenders8.
The four-story, 25,600-square-foot Justice Center, completed in 2000 for $4 million, houses offices for probation, the sheriff, and county prosecutors. As a unique callback to an earlier time, the center was designed to contain a single iron door with an embossed golden lion’s head that came from the 1873 county jail demolished to make way for it9.
In 2013, work began to repair the courthouse after it suffered significant damage from a windstorm. The $400,000 project brought fixes to the statue of Lady Justice, a new roof, replacements for some leaky windows, and patches for holes in the iron tower. The sword that Lady Justice once carried had been blown off when the remnants of Hurricane Ike hit the region in 2008, but it was restored after unceremoniously spending half a decade in a nondescript office10.
I’m glad that work has been done to protect this building, but it seemed like even more might be coming for the area when I visited in 2019. Two years earlier, county officials purchased an old bank nearby and floated plans to add a four-story addition to the courthouse’s existing four-story justice center, increasing the campus by 32,000 square feet in a $20 million project11. Work was being done at the courthouse while I was onsite, but it seemed minor.
It’s been four years since I visited the Union County Courthouse, and nothing more seems to have been added to that crazy, angled annex. I vacillate back and forth about modern additions to historic buildings, but I’m a tourist who doesn’t have to conduct business in any of the courthouses I visit at the end of the day. If the Union County Courthouse in Marysville had to be expanded to continue to serve its constituents and remain viable, then I understand and appreciate it: beyond practicalities, expansions and annexes add to the Midwest’s portfolio of historic courthouses by serving as points of differentiation between otherwise similar buildings. The courthouses in Napoleon and Marysville -with and without expansions- are a perfect example of this dichotomy. I’m all for diversity!
An old building’s history is a real Ship of Theseus slippery slope. Just how long does it take for recently-built annexes to become canon? As far as the Union County Courthouse in Marysville, the justice center has allowed the structure to starkly contrast with some of Gibbs’ other works. While I’ll always veer towards an original building first, I’ll take one with a modern expansion over a slew of copies any day! All of this is to say that, when it comes to our centers of justice, the Midwest is blessed by an embarrassment of riches.
TL;DR
Union County (pop. 58,988, 46/88)
Marysville (pop. 24,267).
Built: 1883
Cost: $135,015 ($3.42 million today)
Architect: David W. Gibbs
Style: Second Empire
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 168 feet
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 11/9/19
Sources Cited
1 “David W. Gibbs & Company” Emporis. Emporis GMBH. 2020. Web. Retrieved 1/1/21.
2 Wilson, Linda D. “Oklahoma City” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Oklahoma Historical Society. Web. Retrieved 1/1/20.
3 “Office of the Mayor” The City of Oklahoma City [Oklahoma City]. Web. Retrieved 1/1/21.
4 Deacon, J. “Union County”. American Courthouses. 2008. Web. Retrieved 1/1/21.
5 Thrane, Susan W., Patterson, B., & Patterson, T. “County Courthouses of Ohio” Indiana University Press [Bloomington]. November 1, 2000. Print.
6 “Union County Courthouse -Marysville” Waymarking.com. Groundspeak, Inc. 2021. Web. Retrieved 1/9/21.
7 “Union County Courthouse in Marysville, Ohio” Ohio Guide Collection. Ohio History Connection. Web. Retrieved 1/9/21.
8 “Union County Courthouse” The Supreme Court of Ohio & The Ohio Judicial System. The Supreme Court of Ohio [Columbus]. Web. Retrieved 12/27/20.
9 Brake, Cindy. “Justice Center about to spring from drawing board” The Marysville Journal-Tribune [Marysville]. September 2, 1999. 1. Print.
10 Zachariah, Holly. “Repairing two courthouses a tall order” The Columbus Dispatch [Columbus]. January 28, 2013. Web. Retrieved 1/1/21.
11”Population growth, increased caseload leads to Union County Justice Center addition” The Columbus Dispatch [Columbus]. December 9, 2017. Web. Retrieved 1/10/21.
