When Warren County’s thirty-five-year-old courthouse burned down in 1907, officials instructed architect J.W. Royer to use what remained of its foundation and retaining walls to minimize the project’s building costs. It’s no wonder commissioners preferred to use what was left over- adjacent to the Illinois state line, Warren County is a small and rural place. In 1907, there weren’t many citizens to tax for a new courthouse!
There aren’t today, either. Warren County has Indiana’s third-smallest population and its lowest population density. About 8,500 people are spread over 365 square miles of the county, a paltry twenty-three inhabitants per square mile! That’s low even by Indiana standards, but early speculators didn’t know things would turn out so sparsely. A year after the county was founded in 1827, a settlement called Warrenton was selected to serve as the seat of government.
Seven blocks of eight lots each and a public square were laid out above where Big Pine Creek empties into the Wabash River1 but despite enthusiastic response at a public land auction2, Warrenton’s prominence lasted only a year before a decree ordered the county seat be moved to Williamsport just three miles southwest.
The move doesn’t make much sense on paper, but it’s said that people in Warrenton weren’t provinding monetary “donations” in line with what the inhabitants of Williamsport were giving officials3. One of the guys cutting the checks was William Harrison, Williamsport’s founder, and officials held courts in his cabin for five years until they built a 40×40 brick courthouse that lasted until 18704.
In 1872, Gordon Randall designed a much larger brick building with a limestone foundation and 155-foot-tall clock tower that stood in what’s now called “Old Town” Williamsport next to the Wabash River. Bizarrely, it was torn down and relocated to a newer part of town in 1886. There it stood for two more decades until the fire5.
Architecturally, most Indiana courthouses from around the turn of the twentieth century were either Beaux Arts- a style incorporating French neoclassicism, Gothic, and Renaissance elements- or Classical Revival, which recalled Greek and Roman influences. Though the Warren County Courthouse has elements of both categories, it doesn’t cleanly fall into either. With a gun to my head, I’d probably call it Italian Renaissance Revival based on one primary factor, the red, s-shaped tiles (called pantiles6) that cover its forty-foot-wide dome.
Overall, the courthouse measures 105 x 78 feet and rises 75 feet tall, including the 21-foot height of the dome and its shallow drum. The rusticated base, heavy entry massing, balustrades, and classical proportions of the building scream Classical Revival, while the ornamentation of the building’s parapet, entryway, monumental staircases, and dome recall Beaux Arts7.
Inside, the courthouse hasn’t changed a lot since it was built. Its walls -some of which remain from its predecessor- are of plastered structural brick that terminate in coved ceilings. Although the first floor of the courthouse is devoted to the offices of elected officials, the 55×38 foot circuit courtroom takes up most of the second8.
Instead of featuring office blocks arranged around a central rotunda like both Beaux Arts and Neoclassical courthouses tended to do, the courthouse’s public spaces are its hallways, which measure fifteen feet wide and feature pink marble wainscotting9. Unlike some of its labyrinthine contemporaries or our slate of locked-down, modern justice centers, the courthouse was designed to be navigated by the public!
After a hundred years of service, the Warren County Courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 19, 2008. Although the building might not make a top ten of Indiana’s most elaborate, it’s a grand structure completed under unique constraints. In my view, that means it’s a worthy and unique entry into our state’s portfolio.
TL;DR
Warren County (pop. 8,415, 89/92)
Williamsburg (pop. 1,878)
52/92 photographed
Built: 1908
Cost: $105,000 ($2.79 million in 2016)
Architect: John W. Royer
Style: Beaux Arts
Courthouse Square: No square
Height: 75 feet
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 3/13/16
Sources Cited
1 Sharp, A. “Political History” A History of Warren County, Indiana. Warren County Historical Society [Williamsport]. Print. 1966.
3 Goodspeed, W. “Towns and Villages of Warren County” Counties of Warren, Benton, Jasper, and Newton, Indiana. F.A. Battey and Co. [Chicago]. Print. 1883.
4 Goodspeed, W. “County Organization” Counties of Warren, Benton, Jasper, and Newton, Indiana. F.A. Battey and Co. [Chicago]. Print. 1883.
5 Enyart, D. “Warren County” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. June 21, 2019.
6 Indiana Landmarks (2013). Warren County. Indianapolis. Indiana Landmarks. Web. Retrieved 6/21/19.
7 National Register of Historic Places, Warren County Courthouse, Williamsport, Warren County, Indiana, National Register # 08000195.
8 Counts, W. & Dilts, J. The 92 Magnificent Indiana Courthouses. Indiana University Press [Bloomington]. Print. 1991.
9 (See footnote 7).
