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The 1891 Vanderburgh County Courthouse was the first old courthouse I ever entered. The majestic building is one of my favorites! I can even appreciate its modern replacement: absent a broader context, I would have never visited all the courthouses in Indiana if it weren’t for Evansville’s Civic Center Complex.

I got to tour the 1891 building when I was six after a trip to the Mesker Park Zoo. The rest of the courthouses of my youth were ones I discovered on my way to family events around the other parts of the state. A trip through a new-to-me county seat was a source of real excitement. I spent weeks obsessively drawing the buildings we passed on the reams of continuous-feed printer paper that seemed ubiquitous back then.

Other subjects became more appealing as I got older. I neglected my interest in courthouse architecture until college, when I learned that a book called The Magnificent 92 Indiana Courthouses existed. It was my first-ever purchase through Amazon Prime! I read it cover-to-cover as soon as it got to my door but was crestfallen when I got to Vanderburgh County’s entry: aside a single photo of an ornate judge’s bench, the spread solely featured pictures of the Civic Center. 

I was baffled by the editorial decision. Hindsight leads me to believe that the authors took the “92” in its title more literally than the “magnificent” part. I made a vow to focus on the state’s historic examples if I ever went to every courthouse and wrote my own book.

The historic Vanderburgh County Courthouse soars 216 feet into the Evansville sky. The Civic Center Complex in Evansville stands a mere three stories in comparison, but it sprawls across forty acres. That’s eight city blocks! The largest of the six buildings in the complex is the limestone City-County Safety and Administrative Building. It reminds me of buildings I studied history and political science at IPFW as a freshman.

I retold some of Evansville’s history in my post about its historic courthouse. It was incorporated in 1817, named the seat of Vanderburgh County a year later, and thrived due to its prominent location on the Ohio River. The city’s population quintupled by the 1880s, which made it the largest settlement in Indiana outside of Indianapolis¹! The Beaux Arts courthouse was finished in 1891².

Evansville had swollen to a population of 140,000 in 1960. Unfortunately, it was a city in decline after several top employers jumped ship. To make matters worse, officials were reeling from a dismal rating in a national list of best places to locate new factories, and the government was running out of room to operate.

Instead of bickering about how to right the ship as might feasibly happen today, Evansville and Vanderburgh County officials joined forces to form Evansville’s Future, Incorporated, which dedicated itself to injecting a sense of progress back into the community by removing urban blight.

In 1961, officials structured a second entity, Central Evansville Improvement Corporation, to acquire land downtown for a new consolidated governmental center. To that end, the CEIC purchased sprawling parcels once owned by Cooks Brewery and the Assumption Catholic Church³.

Meanwhile, officials commissioned local architects Hironimus, Knapp, Given, and Associates to design the new campus. Its principals presented plans for “Civic Circle,” a striking collection of mid-century structures set in and around the curves of an enormous roundabout⁴. Blueprints were finalized, funding was secured, and the company that rated Evansville as a poor place to open a factory changed its tune in anticipation⁵! Unfortunately, that’s when reality caught up with the project: costs had spiraled out of control.

In 1964, architects Holabird and Root -responsible for Chicago’s City Hall, the Chicago Board of Trade Building, and the Palmer House Hilton- presented a new design for the Civic Center that aligned with the final project’s more sensible requirements. The building, which sits across Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from a plaza that separates it from the Ford Center arena and the historic Victory Theatre⁶, was completed for $27 million in 1969⁷.

The complex faces southwest and features an asymmetrical entrance with fountains and a cantilevered wall that stretches across its plaza. Narrow windows separated by wide bands separate its first and second stories, and a two-story wing known as the Civic Center Courts Building extends to the northeast of the building’s main facade. 

It might not look like it next to its predecessor, but the Civic Center is a remarkable structure within the context of its construction. It served as the lynchpin of a revitalized downtown and captured the community’s attention: 30,000 people toured it on its two-day dedication ceremony⁸! The Evansville Press cited the new center as a “forty-acre affirmative statement” of a newly-energized city⁹. 

I’ve never been particularly drawn to Indiana’s modern courthouses. I was in town to take photos of the 1891 courthouse, but my mom insisted that we stop at the Civic Center. She knew I hadn’t been back to Evansville in twenty years and that it’d probably be two more decades before I’d have reason to return.

I only took photos of the building’s southwestern face, but I’m glad I did: just as I thought, I haven’t been back in the past six years! The Civic Center Complex is important to the history of Vanderburgh County, it inspired me to go to all of Indiana’s historic courthouses, and it really is striking. In retrospect, I’m glad we stopped to document part of it.

TL;DR
Vanderburgh County (pop. 181,616, 8/92)
Evansville (pop. 118,930)
Built: 1969
Cost: $25 million ($163 million in 2016)
Architect: Holabird and Root
Style: Modern
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 3 stories
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 11/11/17. 

Sources Cited
1 United States Census Bureau. “Census of Population and Housing”. Retrieved March 1, 2014.
2 National Register of Historic Places, Vanderburgh County Courthouse, Evansville, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, National Register # 79000031.
3 “Assumption Catholic Church” Historic Evansville. Web. Retrieved 1/11/20.
4 “Civic Circle” Sears Collection. Willard Library Historic Photo Collection. Willard Library. Web. Retrieved 1/11/20.
5 Coures, Kelley. “The Circle That Wasn’t” Evansville Living. Tucker Publishing Group [Evansville]. Web. Retrieved 1/11/20.
6 (See footnote 5).
7 Smith, D. (2016, November 19). HISTORY LESSON: Civic Center Complex in Evansville. The Evansville Courier & Press. Web. Retrieved September 22, 2023.
8 Alley, H. (Center ’69 Hallmark (1969, August 17). The Evansville Press. p. 38.
9 A Forty Acre Affirmative Statement (1969, May 20). The Evansville Press. p. 22.