As a kid, the courthouses I liked the most all featured a landmark clock tower. They contrasted the concrete box officials plopped into my hometown during the space race! Around two-thirds of Indiana counties have a historic courthouse with a clock tower1, but the first to really upend the tea table for young me was DeKalb County’s in Auburn. It doesn’t feature a tower or cupola, but it became an early favorite nonetheless.
I first saw the DeKalb County Courthouse during a childhood trip to the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival in downtown Auburn. The three-day event celebrates old automobiles built by those marquees, and my dad and grandpa took us almost every year.
I can appreciate a coffin-nosed Cord 812 or a Duesenberg Model J as much as the next guy, but my memories all centered around the fantastic courthouse that loomed over the festivities. The gigantic building is one of the finest in the state!
Auburn wasn’t always home to such opulence. The city was founded in 1836 on Cedar Creek near two prominent trails, the Goshen-Defiance and Coldwater Roads2. It was named the seat of DeKalb County a year later, and the first permanent courthouse was a two-story, wood frame structure completed in 18443.
The first courthouse lasted for twenty years before the county outgrew it. Its replacement, built by a fellow named Alpheous Wheelock, was completed in 1864 for $23,372. A year later, the first courthouse was set ablaze in a bonfire that celebrated the end of the Civil War4!
By the 1870s, industry in Albany began to consolidate around the manufacturing of vehicles, mostly buggies5. The Auburn Automobile Company, née the Eckhart Carriage Company, was incorporated in 1900, and the Double Fabric Tire Company, later Auburn Rubber, wasn’t too far behind. All of that made Auburn grow to six times its size! The growth meant a new courthouse was in order, and DeKalb County officials spared no expense in building it.
Officials selected the Fort Wayne firm of Mahurin and Mahurin to design the new structure fresh off their completion of courthouses in Bloomington and Michigan City. The third DeKalb County Courthouse may have been finished at the height of the Neoclassical boom that swept Indiana’s county seats, but it turned out bigger and more expensive than its peers. Its grandeur is evident from a trip around the square, but the courthouse really shines on the inside. That’s where most of the money went.
The interior of the DeKalb County Courthouse features grained steel doors, trim, counters, and shelves; furniture that resembles oak; and faux marble -scagliola- in most of its public spaces6. An enormous stained-glass dome, hidden by the building’s parapet, covers the rotunda like a gilded umbrella7.
It’s impossible to miss the twin murals “The Spirit of Industry” and “The Spirit of Progress,” each eighteen feet across and twelve feet tall. As a nod to Auburn’s burgeoning manufacturing businesses, “Industry” features an allegorical female adjacent to factories and mechanics, a juxtaposition that any fan of Art Deco can appreciate8.
Back outside on festival day, look at the building on its east or west faces, then travel to north or south to the stand selling Lemon Shakeups or Spiral Spuds. You’ll notice that each alternate side presents a different impression. From the north and south, the structure looks like a massive caricature of, say, the Carroll County Courthouse.
From the east or west, you’ll see that it closely resembles Clarence Martindale’s courthouse in Hendricks County. To me, the building most closely resembles the Miami County Courthouse in Peru, but without that building’s enormous dome.
Maybe the different impression each side of the courthouse makes is part of what I love about it. I’ll never forget returning to grandpa’s house after a trip to the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival and trying to perfect the arched clock surrounds of its north and south fronts in countless drawings. The DeKalb County Courthouse made an enormous impression on me from a young age, and it’s one of the finest that Indiana has to offer.
TL;DR
DeKalb County (pop.42,307)
Auburn (pop. 12,788).
Built: 1914
Cost: $317,000 ($7.57 million in 2016)
Architect: Mahurin & Mahurin
Style: Neoclassical
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 68 feet
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 3/16/16- 61/92
Sources Cited
1 Flook, C. “Which of Indiana’s 92 County Courthouses is Your Favorite?” Visit Indiana. Indiana Office of Tourism Development [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved 8/8/20.
2 “History of DeKalb County Indiana” B.F. Bowen and Company [Indianapolis]. 1914. Print.\
3 Enyart, D. “Fires” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. Retrieved 8/8/20.
4 Enyart, D. “DeKalb County” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. Retrieved 8/8/20.
5 Indiana Landmarks (2013). DeKalb County. Indianapolis. Indiana Landmarks. Web. Retrieved 8/8/20.
6 “Wing & Mahurin, architects, Fort Wayne, Ind” (1896). Wing and Mahurin. Fort Wayne. Allen County Public Library. Print.
7 “Slideshow – Courthouse Pictures” DeKalb County, Indiana. eGov Strategies LLC. Web. Retrieved 8/8/20.
8 “DeKalb County Courthouse” Visit DeKalb County. DeKalb County Visitors Bureau. 2020. Web. Retrieved 8/8/20.
