Vincennes was the first territorial capital of Indiana. William Henry Harrison, territorial governor, and future president, was a pervasive presence in the city’s politics, and residents of the Indiana Territory wanted to get away from him. In 1813, the capital was moved to Corydon, a prominent stop on the road to Vincennes1.
It soon became clear that the log cabin chosen to house territorial officials was too small, so the territory rented out space from Harrison County, established in 1790. Indiana became a state twenty-six years later, and officials rented out Corydon’s new courthouse. They used it for nine years until counties further north sprung into existence.
The new city of Indianapolis seemed best primed to cater to those settlements in the state’s upper regions, so the capital was moved there in 1825. The abandoned capitol building was pressed into service as the Harrison County Courthouse, a status it would retain for about a hundred years. A county office building was erected next to the courthouse in 1848 to provide the government with more space to conduct business3. It lasted until 1882 when a larger structure was completed.
Representatives from Indianapolis returned to Corydon in 1917. Nearly a century after Indiana’s government relocated, officials decided to take back their old home, the old statehouse, and maintain it as a historical site. If Harrison County officials objected, it didn’t matter much since documents drawn up and signed in 1917 gave them four years to find or build a new home for the courts. In typical fashion, the process took more than a decade, and it’s not really clear where courts were held after 1921 until the new building was finished.
Perhaps courts were held at that Victorian-era office building. If so, the arrangement was accepted for a while, but the state wanted it gone since it was too close to the stoic old capitol4. Architects obliged, and the building was demolished.
A predicament arose. Imagine you’re an architect tasked with designing a courthouse. There’s just one catch: you can’t design a big, ornate courthouse like you wanted. Instead, you’ve got to preserve the majesty of the previous courthouse, which will be retained to sit in front of your creation as a historic site. Was it mentioned that it was built in 1816? Good. And you were aware that it’s only 40 feet square, right? Great!
That’s the situation architects Frank Fowler and Gil Karges found themselves in regarding the design of the new courthouse5. It’s hard enough for designers to craft sympathetic additions onto our old courthouses in the modern era, let alone compete with a tiny old fusspot of a capitol! The duo persisted, though, and the cornerstone for Harrison County’s new courthouse was laid on February 25, 19286. It complements the old building nicely.
The building was dedicated on Saturday, May 4, 1929, in a ceremony Posey County Circuit Judge Herdis Clements presided over. The yellow-brick structure is three stories tall, and it’s one of the simpler courthouses in the state to reflect the old state capitol it faces. The south side of the building is its primary entrance. It’s separated into three groups of three bays with two flanking a projecting entrance pavilion. A pair of recessed metal doors are framed by blank tablets in the stone water table that makes up the building’s first floor.
Above the main entrance, four massive Roman Tuscan columns support a portico with a large entablature. It’s topped with a decorative stone cornice and brick parapet that features four pilasters that follow the path of the columns below. Two wings of similar design flank the three-story entrance pavilion, each with two sets of three rectangular windows. Like the central bay, each side is capped by a stone cornice and brick parapet.
The courthouse reminds me of Elmer Dunlap’s Pike County Courthouse in Petersburg, completed around the same time. Fowler and Karges did a remarkable job of creating a building with its own imposing identity that doesn’t manage to take away from the tiny statehouse it supplanted. That’s an outstanding accomplishment!
There’s a lot for history lovers to do and see in Corydon today, even more than two hundred years after it was founded. For starters, you can tour the old state capitol! Many other historic buildings and places still stand.
Unfortunately, I didn’t go to any of those places and only stopped for lunch on my way towards English and Paoli. In retrospect, I wish I’d stopped on a day when the old statehouse was open for tours. I’d love to get a closer glimpse of Indiana history as it applied to one of our oldest standing courthouses, and I’d love to spend more time around its replacement. Given its location and the unique restrictions its architects were forced to deal with, Harrison County’s 1929 courthouse is a remarkable entry into Indiana’s portfolios!
TL;DR
Harrison County (pop. 39,163, 37/92)
Corydon ( pop. 3,119)
76/92 photographed
Built: 1929
Cost: $250,000 ($3.5 million in 2016)
Architect: Fowler & Karges
Style: Neoclassical
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 3 stories
Current Use: Courts and some county offices
Photographed: 4/3/2016
Sources Cited
1 National Register of Historic Places, Territorial Capitol of Former Indiana Territory, Vincennes, Knox County, Indiana, National Register # 73000021.
2 Barnhart, J.D., & Riker, D.L. eds. (1971). Indiana to 1816: The Colonial Period. The History of Indiana. Indiana Historical Bureau and the Indiana Historical Society [Indianapolis]. Print.
3 Griffin, Frederick Porter (December 1972). “National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Corydon Historic District” (PDF).
4 Karst, F. “Corydon: Indiana’s first capital preserves reminders of state’s origins” Travel. The South Bend Tribune [South Bend]. Print. C8.
5 Indiana Landmarks (2013). Harrison County. Indianapolis. Indiana Landmarks. Web. Retrieved 5/6/20.
6 “Corydon Courthouse Corner Stone Laid” The Indianapolis Star [Indianapolis]. February 26, 1928. Print. 4.
Bonus points for the use of the word fusspot!