Six-year-old me spent a lot of time in the back seat traveling across the state to a family Christmas here or an Easter there. The historic courthouses I saw on those trips made a massive impression on me! I spent hours drawing each I came across and knew that the Hamilton County Courthouse in downtown Noblesville was truly special.

Hamilton County was still pretty rural when I was a kid. Nowadays, it leads the state in population growth¹ and wealth, boasting an average household income of $79,000², nearly twice the median household income across the state per the Census. All that wealth and expansion has occurred as communities like Carmel, Fishers, Westfield, and Cicero have been dramatically transformed.

I’m only 32, but I feel like an old-timer dusting off fragmented memories of cornfields whenever I find myself stuck on the Exit 205 off-ramp surrounded by IKEA, Topgolf, and Portillo’s. None of that existed even seven years ago when I worked in offices nearby on 121st Street, but the area was packed with development even then. A decade earlier, the only thing five miles out from 465 and Binford Boulevard was an Amish furniture store in a desolate strip mall.

I’m glad that downtown Noblesville has managed to avoid the aggressive expansion and accompanying New Urbanist theme that defines the new downtown cores of its growing peers. I like to think things turned out that way because its Second Empire Courthouse remains the city’s lodestar: when it was designed by Edwin May in 1879, the building was without a peer in Indiana. It still is in many ways, and May probably knew it would turn out that way.

A prolific architect, Edwin May drew up plans for nine county courthouses and even got so far as drawing blueprints for the Indiana State House! Unfortunately, he was fired from the Hamilton County project after feuding with A.G. Campfield, the construction contractor. Ostensibly, May thought Campfield was skimping out on materials for the building’s foundation, but it seems that Campfield was an associate of a competing architect named E.E. Myers who lost to May the race to design the State Capitol and subsequently sued him³.

At any rate, May was let go. County officials brought in J.C. Johnson to finish the project, and he changed nearly every aspect of the courthouse’s exterior ornamentation. Johnson was a well-known architect from Ohio, but is better known to readers of this blog for his dismal failure in clock tower design. All of his local courthouses -including three in Indiana and one in Defiance, Ohio– ended up decapitated because of structural failures.

The Hamilton County Courthouse looks fantastic now, but its pristine state wasn’t always the case. For starters, the clock tower is a replica, albeit a very good one. The original lasted longer than its cousins, but the tower was unstable by 1968 and in real danger of toppling over. Residents began a push to tear the old building down completely until a contractor reproduced it with modern materials. Unfortunately, that solution was only temporary and led to two years of additional issues that were finally resolved when the tower was covered with lead-coated copper⁴.

The clock tower saga wasn’t the old courthouse’s only trip to rehab. Just 25 years after it was built, the interior received marble floors and a new heating system⁵. Then, in the late 1940s, the county carved a third story out of the building by dropping its second-floor ceilings. An elevator was added in 1957, then came the recurring clock tower issues.

Most significantly, growth across Hamilton County had picked up by the late 1980s, and it became apparent that, despite all the fixes, the old courthouse was no longer large enough to effectively serve its purpose. Officials moved out -and eventually in- to a new, 200,000-square-foot justice center that opened in 1992⁶.

It would have been easy for commissioners to give up on their historic courthouse right then and there. In stark contrast to the gleaming justice center across the street, the old courthouse was exhausted! Over the years, most of the ornamentation had been removed from the building’s mansard roof. Chimneys were lopped off, as were dormer windows, statues, and decorative iron railings that graced its roofline.

Thankfully, commissioners thought better than to demolish the courthouse. Instead, they committed $4 million to fund a complete restoration. Work started just as the county’s population began to explode, and the project yielded some interesting information about the courthouse, such as archaic attempts at soundproofing the building when it was under construction. Workers didn’t have access to modern materials like acoustic foam in 1879. Instead, they packed five inches of dirt between the floors to silence the courtrooms!

Filling the floors with dirt was a utilitarian solution that belied the building’s opulence. Today, though, its old rooms have no reason to be soundproofed: ever since essential county functions moved out, the courthouse has mostly acted as an architectural showcase for the county. As a kid, I got to tour the building thanks to an aunt who lived nearby and recognized my enthusiastic appreciation. Post-renovation, the building was beautiful. The chimneys, windows, and railings were reinstalled, and the restored clock tower seemed to glow in the afternoon sun. It’s still stunning today, nearly a quarter-century after I first visited.

The 1879 courthouse was Noblesville’s third, and the county justice center that replaced it will soon welcome a massive $25 million addition to allow it to keep up with the times after just over thirty years of service⁷. The original justice center was tastefully designed, and renderings show that its addition will compliment the city’s historic downtown too.

The Hamilton County Courthouse and its surrounding square are true gems that are representative of a downtown that grew organically. Unless you live somewhere that sucks, chances are that your county seat grew that way too. Once Noblesville was platted and a courthouse was built to anchor its middle, businesses sprang up around the square in response to the community’s needs and wants. As the city grew, new amenities replaced old ones, all the way up to its most important facility, the courthouse.

That’s a different growth trajectory than some of the communities that surround Noblesville have followed, but I’m grateful for historically-minded officials who have continued to keep the landmark old courthouse in pristine shape.

TL;DR
Hamilton County (pop. 309,697, 4/92)
Noblesville (pop. 60,183).
24/92 photographed
Built: 1879
Cost: $101,604 ($2.69 million in 2016)
Architect: Edwin May; J.C. Johnson.
Style: Second Empire
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 145 feet
Current Use: County offices
Photographed: 8/19/15

Sources Cited
1 “Hamilton County’s population growth is fastest in Indiana” The Indianapolis Star [Indianapolis]: May 22, 2016. Web. Retrieved 3/25/18.
2 “Hamilton County among nation’s wealthiest” WTHR [Indianapolis]. August, 26, 2016. Web. Retrieved 3/25/18.
3 Enyart, David. “Hamilton County” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. Retrieved 3/25/18.
4 “Courthouse” The Noblesville Ledger [Noblesville]. June 26, 1992: 11. Print.
5 “Controversy never far from Courthouse” The Noblesville Ledger [Noblesville]. June 26, 1992: 1. Print.
6 “Envisioning a new look for our courthouse” The Noblesville Ledger [Noblesville]. February 13, 1993: 2. Print.
7 “Hamilton County to spend $38.6M to expand jail, judicial center” The Indianapolis Star [Indianapolis]. December 12, 2017. Web. Retrieved 3/25/18.