Read time: 6 min.

A lot of information about historic courthouses is available to anyone interested in them. Unfortunately, newer structures often get the short-shrift. It makes sense that a concrete justice center won’t get its due compared to a Second Empire landmark, but it’s a shame that even a sixty-seven-year-old courthouse like Champaign County’s in Ohio seems forgotten. It’s a great old building!

Champaign County got its name from a French word for “open, level, country¹.” As Ohio’s eighteenth county, it was established in 1805 from land cut away from Greene and Franklin counties. Urbana was named the county seat the following October, and it has retained that status ever since.

It’s unclear where the name came from aside from the obvious connection to the Latin word “urbs,” which means “city²,” but by 1833, Urbana had grown enough to feature a courthouse and jail, a printing office, a church, a market, nine stores, and more than a hundred houses³.

The first courthouse in Urbana was built from logs away from the public square. During the War of 1812, the structure was used as an army hospital and got so full of injured troops that it became necessary to use the top floor of the county jail for courts. The jail was the de facto courthouse until 1817, when the county’s second was erected on the county square⁴.

The second courthouse was a two-story brick structure. The building’s only entrance faced south and provided access to county offices on opposing sides of a cramped hallway that fed into a large courtroom also used also for church services, school, and other public gatherings. The building’s second story held the rest of the county’s offices and Urbana’s Masonic hall.

Champaign County’s third courthouse was first ideated in 1837 when officials decided that a structure with fireproof offices should be built. They were frugal: instead of appointing an architect to develop new plans for the building, County Commissioner James Dallas was dispatched to Hillsboro seventy miles south to obtain a copy of the plans for their courthouse.

Instead of ponying up for a legitimate architect, commissioners paid Dallas $8.00 for his trouble. That’s $217 today⁵, and I’d gladly take it for driving to a courthouse an hour away! After some change orders, the third courthouse in Urbana was completed and occupied in 1840.

The new courthouse aged rapidly. By 1879, commissioners finally appealed for assistance to replace it, hiring D.W. Gibbs -an architect responsible for several Ohio courthouses and an early mayor of Oklahoma City- to significantly repair and expand the old building. Gibbs completed the county’s fourth courthouse in 1882.

Even though its clock tower echoed some of Gibbs’ larger courthouses in Napoleon and Marysville, the building was still too small; it was renovated in 1903. Fourteen years later, it received a sympathetic annex designed by C.C. and E.A. Weber that accommodated new offices for the county surveyor and a law library. In 1948, the building burned down in a spectacular blaze.

Residents of Champaign County were frugal and, initially, didn’t want to pay for a replacement. After the fire, officials held courts in a home south of town. In 1948, a $1.1 million bond to build a new courthouse was defeated by residents, as was a $875,000 bond the year after. A new courthouse was finally approved in 1952 for $650,000, 60% of the original request⁶.

Urbana native Philip T. Partridge designed the current courthouse. Its construction spanned two years, and the building was dedicated by Governor C. William O’Neill⁷, who remarked that his father once practiced law next door to the courthouse and that, as a young lawyer himself, he’d tried his first case in Urbana as well⁸. Residents and businesses alike were thrilled with its completion! 

“So it is with pride, that we salute those whose efforts have made the new court house a reality…and a mark of progress which like our financial institutions adds stability to the community,” a group of banks stated in a full-page advertisement in the Urbana Daily Citizen⁹.

There aren’t any courthouses like Champagne County’s in Indiana. To me, it resembles a 1930s post office or a structure like Ball State’s Arts & Communication building, which was completed in 1957. I consulted some sources to figure out what style it belonged to. It suprised me to read that someone on Wikipedia called it a part of the “International” movement. I’m not a scholar, so I asked some friends. One is a professor at Ball State who, like me, has been to every historic courthouse in Indiana.

Internationalism was his verdict, too. All the building’s architect said was that its design was meant to harmonize with the architecture of the city’s Masonic Temple next door (Architect, 1954), so it seems like some leeway can be taken in interpreting it. The building’s spandrel panels and vertical ppilasters imply an Art Deco or Art Moderne influence, but sometimes old buildings defy easy categorization! I think that’s great.

I love buildings from the fifties. I especially enjoy the fonts they incorporate in their signage! Though both older and newer courthouses exist, it’s important to highlight those caught in the middle, like Champagne County’s. It may not seem like much compared to older examples nearby in Logan, Clark, Miami, or Shelby Counties, but it’s a worthy courthouses nonetheless and a vibrant member of Ohio’s historic courthouse portfolio.

TL;DR
Champaign County (pop. 38,885, 64/88)
Urbana (pop. 11,496)
Built: 1956
Cost: $650,000 ($6.18 million today)
Architect: Philip T. Partridge
Style: International
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: Three stories}
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 11/2/19

Sources Cited
1 “Agriculture & Natural Resources in Champaign County” Ohio State University Extension [Columbus]. Web. Retrieved 1/17/21.
2 “Urbana and Champaign county” Ohio Writers’ Program. Gaumer Publishing Company [Ohio]. 1942. Print.
3 Kilbourn, John. “The Ohio Gazetter, or, a Topographical Dictionary” Scott and Wright [Columbus]. 1833. Print.
4 Middleton, Evan. “History of Champaign County, Ohio .” B.F. Bowen & Company [Indianapolis]. 1917. Print.
5 “Value of $8 from 1837 to 2021” CPI Inflation Calculator. Official Inflation Data, Alioth Finance [Uttarakhand]. Web. Retrieved 1/17/21.
6 Thrane, Susan W., Patterson, B., & Patterson, T. “County Courthouses of Ohio” Indiana University Press [Bloomington]. November 1, 2000. Print. 
7 Governor O’Neill Is Guest Of Honor For Dedication (1957, June 5). The Urbana Daily Citizen. p. 1.
8 Governor Dedicates Courthouse In Ceremonies Here (1957, June 10). The Urbana Daily Citizen. p. 1.
9 Progress through Stability (1957, June 5). The Urbana Daily Citizen. p. 13.
10 Architect Hopes To Ask Bids On New Courthouse In March (1954, February 4). The Urbana Daily Citizen. p. 6.