I was lucky to spend several summers at rented lake cottages in northern Indiana. The less said about the fish I hooked in the eye, the better, but I have a lot of great memories from those lazy days! One of them involves the Whitley County Courthouse in downtown Columbia City.
I was about eight when my family caravanned from Tri-Lakes to Columbia City for a concert on the courthouse square one summer evening. A blanket was laid out and snacks were provided, but I can’t remember anything else because the weird, bell-shaped chimneys of the courthouse enraptured me! Discovering a new one was always a big event for me, and the Whitley County Courthouse was one of the first I’d seen that wasn’t frequently passed on trips to family events. I was hooked.
Whitley County was first part of Huntington County until it was subdivided in 1835. The home of Richard Baughan served as the county courthouse by 1839, when Joseph Pierce was indicted for retailing without a license and fined $2.001. A proper county seat, Columbia, was formed later in the year, and courts were held at David Long’s hotel and the home of Abraham Cuppy, the county clerk.
I didn’t know this as a kid, but Columbia City has two extant courthouses. The first, a simple two-story wooden structure measuring 36×18 feet, was completed in 18412. That building, which also served as Columbia City’s first schoolhouse3, was located at the west side of the courthouse square until 1850, when it was purchased and moved away. After some shuffling, it still stands a couple blocks east of downtown.
A brick courthouse that lasted thirty-nine years superseded the frame building. It would have lasted longer if timid commissioners had gotten their way- by the late 1880s, it was clear to local stakeholders that the intermediate courthouse’s defective chimneys and lack of fireproof construction made it unsafe to occupy. Thirty of Whitley County’s most successful citizens banded together to demand that a new courthouse be erected and, fearing for their jobs, commissioners finally acquiesced4.
Brentwood Tolan was hired to draw up plans for the courthouse. He and his father T.J. were responsible for six others in Indiana and four more in neighboring states. Their architectural tree even expands to another prolific group, Wing & Mahurin of Fort Wayne, which designed four Indiana courthouses and a replacement tower for a fifth. Before he joined up with Marshall Mahurin, George Wing served as the Tolan’s chief draftsman5.
If his portfolio is any indication, T.J. was enamored with Second Empire architecture with its mansard roofs and elaborate ornamentation. Brentwood mostly humored him, though he came into his own Beaux Arts influences near the end of his father’s life. While his courthouses in Warsaw, Rockville, and Muncie were links to his father’s stylistic impulses, the courthouse in Columbia City probably best reflects Brentwood’s preferences.
My assessment isn’t to say he abandoned his dad’s teachings entirely, since the north and south entrances of the Whitley County Courthouse are framed by mansard turrets and its cross-axial plan and central clock tower come straight from his old man’s playbook. The rest, though? That’s where it starts to get interesting6.
I was struck by two things when I first saw the building during that youthful summer at the lake cottage. The first was those unusual chimneys that looked like columns with nothing to support. The second thing I found fascinating was the courthouse’s pair of monumental staircases- Mom laid our blanket out right next to one!
During the courthouse boom of the late 1800s, it was common to design a building that sat on a raised basement that was typically devoted to utilitarian use. The first floor rose from that, so it was necessary to build a staircase to reach it from the outside. Those enormous steps are becoming a rarity today since accessibility concerns have led some counties to remove them entirely. Thankfully, Whitley County’s staircases have a built-in compromise: they’re supported by open arches that provide access to its basement-level doors.
Aside from its northern face, much of the building’s bulk is relatively unadorned. That’s a testament to how much Tolan’s roof effects -the mansard peaks, the chimneys, and the 150-foot tall clock tower- really contribute to its appearance7! Rising from a squarish base, the tower’s drum consists of an open-arched series of paired columns that frame louvered openings. That’s where the bells are.
Eight consoles with four clocks between them that face the cardinal directions sit above the columns, along with four ordinal oculi. The dome itself features a conical vault with a copper covering and supports a large finial in the shape of a torch. The tower is visible from at least 2.2 miles away, a distance that would be longer if not for a curve on old US-30.
All of those features make the Whitley County Courthouse a true landmark. After his work was finished, Brentwood Tolan moved on from his Second Empire-and-Beaux Arts mashup to design the Richardson Romanesque LaPorte County Courthouse two years later8. Tolan reached his creative peak at forty-seven when he designed Allen County’s massive Beaux Arts courthouse, a nationally-renowned masterpiece. After that, he retreated to Lima, Ohio. There, he joined an existing architectural firm before he died in 1923 at only sixty-eight.
Despite his early death, Tolan turned in an astounding career: he took over a project from his ailing father at twenty-nine and wound up designing the Kosciusko County Courthouse! He finished up the Whitley County Courthouse at thirty-five and reached his apex at forty-seven. I’m thirty-two now, just fifteen years removed from Tolan’s masterpiece, and I’m almost certain I won’t have the chance to design and build a courthouse. There’s always the chance that I could dupe some stupid county into a contract, but I’ll probably never do a lot of things I dreamed of as a kid during those summers at the lakes. Despite that, I’ll continue to appreciate the Whitley County Courthouse, its weird chimneys, and its beautiful stairs and clock tower, until the day I drop.
TL;DR
Whitley County (pop. 33,292)
Columbia City (pop. 8,750)
3/92 photographed
Built: 1890
Cost: $165,000 ($4.39 million in 2016).
Architect: Brentwood S. Tolan
Style: Beaux Arts
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 150 feet
Current Use: County office and courts
Photographed: 8/15/15
Sources Cited
1 Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Indiana. Baskin, Forster & Co [Chicago]. 1876. Print.
2 Enyart, David. “Whitley County” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. 4/21/20.
3 Whitley County and Its Families, 1835-1995. Whitley County Historical Society. Turner Publications [Nashville]. 1995. Print.
4 National Register of Historic Places, Whitley County Courthouse, Columbia City, Whitley County, Indiana, National Register # 79000029.
5 Enyart, David. “Architects” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. Retrieved 4/21/20.
6 Indiana Landmarks (2013). Whitley County. Indianapolis. Indiana Landmarks. Web. Retrieved 4/21/20.
7 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map- Columbia City, Indiana. 1897. Sanborn Fire Insurance Company. Indiana University Libraries. Web. Retrieved 4/21/20.
8 Indiana Landmarks (2013). LaPorte County. Indianapolis. Indiana Landmarks. Web. Retrieved 4/21/20.
