My parents divorced when I was three. Money was tight, but my mom sacrificed to shield us from knowing we were poor. One time, she found the funds to take my siblings and me on a day trip to the Mesker Park Zoo in Evansville. I fell in love with the old Vanderburgh County Courthouse that day. It was the first historic courthouse I ever set foot in, and I was blown away! I felt the same when I visited again twenty years later.
Although I was six years old, I remember our trip to Evansville like it was yesterday. At the zoo, I recall positioning myself over the railing of a pier to take a photo of a giraffe, then feeling the lanyard come loose and separate. I panicked for a moment as I tried to save my Fisher-Perfect Shot film camera -the highlight of the previous Christmas- from falling into a lake. It took a long time to fish it out. It was ruined.
I’d spied the courthouse as we came into Evansville on the Lloyd Expressway. Its majestic clock tower dominated the skyline, and the sight of it was breathtaking, I don’t know whether Mom planned for us to tour it from the get-go or if our visit was simply a response to my caterwauling over my camera, but we stopped.
I instantly fell in love with the place, from its pink scagliola of the probate courtroom to the gold trim and moldings of the old superior court. Of all its features, my favorite was the building’s rotunda. Framed by story after story of circular railings under a stained glass dome, it seemed endless! Our tour was epic, and I’ll never forget it.
I’m often asked to rank the state’s courthouses since I’ve been to all of them. It’s hard to do objectively, but I’d place Evansville’s behind Allen County’s in Fort Wayne, just before or equal to Tippecanoe County’s in Lafayette. Evansville was founded by Hugh McGary, who bought land on its Ohio River oxbow in 1812. McGary initially named his port after himself, but changed the town’s name to honor Robert Morgan Evans, a brigadier general, in 1814. As Evansville, the town was incorporated in 1817. It was named the seat of Vanderburgh County the following year.
The city thrived due to its prominent location. Although the earliest courts were held at McGary’s home, officials built a 34 x 46 foot, two-story courthouse for $6,000 in 18201. The building was improved several times over the next thirteen years as Evansville continued to grow due to speculation around the Wabash and Erie Canal, but the plan was a bust.
The Evansville & Crawfordsville Railroad had opened by the time the local segment was completed in 18533, and it soon surpassed the the ill-fated waterway as the best way to travel long distances4. Nevertheless, the canal’s early promise combined with the railroad’s reality to convince local officials to build a new courthouse again. James Roquet was commissioned to design a Greek Revival structure with a projecting pediment and tall, hexagonal lantern4. It was completed for $14,000 in a process that took five years after the original iteration burned down.
The county’s second courthouse soon proved too small: Evansville’s population quintupled by the 1880s, making it the second-largest city in the state5! A replacement was again in order, and commissioners arranged an unusual anonymous competition between architects6. Henry Wolters of Louisville won, and his extravagant Beaux Arts building was completed on top of the canal’s old turnaround basin in 18917.
The courthouse is gaudy in terms of appointments and height. Its 216-foot tall tower is the building’s most prominent feature, nabbing it the title of Evansville’s third-tallest building. It’s also the third-tallest historic courthouse in the state. Both are fitting, since Evansville is -you guessed it- the third-largest city in Indiana nowadays.
Despite the broad strokes of grandeur its clock tower paints, the old Vanderburgh County Courthouse is home to myriad smaller ornamentation. For one thing, forty-eight pairs of pilasters are topped with carvings of fruit, flowers, and vegetables native to southwestern Indiana8! Furthermore, windows on the building’s third story are topped by elaborate scrollwork.
Beyond the prominent tower and the sculptures, Wolters designed the courthouse to feature a complex arrangement of rusticated and smooth stonework, arched windows surrounded by scrollwork, and fourteen larger-than-life statues carved by Franz Engelsmann, a Chicago sculptor. My favorite elements are the building’s semicircular bays: they’re topped with hemispherical domes made of terra cotta lumber, a fireproof mixture of clay and sawdust9.
The old Vanderburgh County Courthouse is magnificent at first glance, but its exuberant features unfold in a way that’s equally impressive to an eagle-eyed observer. It’s no surprise that the building provided the perfect backdrop for speeches by Presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy!
Unfortunately, local officials realized they had a problem at the dawn of the 1960s: downtown Evansville had become a rough place after several major factories packed their bags to leave town. To make matters worse, the government was running out of room!
Reeling from a dismal rating in a national list of recommended factory sites, city and county officials joined forces to design a new governmental campus. After forming a corporation called Central Evansville Improvement Corp., they started to acquire land downtown that includes the former home of Cooks Brewery and the Assumption Catholic Church11. A new building, the sprawling Evansville Civic Center Complex, was completed in 1969. The old courthouse was vacated soon after.
The Civic Center Complex is strikingly brutalist, stark, and far different than the Beaux Arts affluence of its 1891 predecessor. Thankfully, the size of the old courthouse and the exorbitant cost of razing it led to its survival12. Today, it’s available for events and tours like the one I went on when I was six.
Although the Civic Center has long since usurped its official function, the 1891 Vanderburgh County Courthouse remains an impressive beacon of Evansville’s status as the Crescent City of the Ohio13. Even though it’d been two decades since my first visit, seeing its iconic tower rise in the distance as I approached inspired the same awe I felt as a kid. I felt a blend of nostalgia, amazement, and a renewed appreciation for the building’s enduring beauty and significance.
My words and pictures don’t do the old Vanderburgh County Courthouse justice, but it’s among the upper echelon of Indiana’s historic courthouses.
TL;DR
Vanderburgh County (pop. 181,451, 8/92)
Evansville (pop. 117,963)
87/92 photographed
Built: 1891
Cost: $466,000 (1891). ($12.3 million in 2016)
Architect: Henry Wolters
Style: Beaux Arts
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville
Height: 216 feet
Current Use: Non-governmental
Photographed: 11/11/2017
Sources Cited
1 Enyart, David. “Vanderburgh County” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. Retrieved 4/11/20.
2 Morlock, J.. The Evansville Story. 1956. James Morlock. Web. Retrieved 4/11/20.
3 Railroad Lines and Stops” Historic Evansville. Web. Retrieved 4/11/20.
4 Courthouse History. Keith Vincent. 2018. Web. Retrieved 4/11/20.
5 United States Census Bureau. “Census of Population and Housing”. Retrieved March 1, 2014.
6 Counts, Will; Jon Dilts (1991). The 92 Magnificent Indiana Courthouses. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Print.
7 National Register of Historic Places, Vanderburgh County Courthouse, Evansville, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, National Register # 79000031.
8 Indiana Landmarks (2013). Vanderburgh County. Indianapolis. Indiana Landmarks. Web. Retrieved 4/11/20.
9 10 VICTORIAN TERRA COTTA Lumber Company LTD 1889-1903 (n.d.) Wandong History Group Inc. [Wandong]. Web. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
11 “Assumption Catholic Church” Historic Evansville. Web. Retrieved 1/11/20.
12 History of The Old Courthouse (n.d.). The Old Courthouse. Vanderburgh County, Indiana Government [Evansville]. Web. Retrieved September 20, 2023.
13 Dunn, J.P. (1912). Indiana Geographical Nomenclature. Indiana Magazine of History. Vol. 8. Magazine.
