Sullivan County officials planned a new building to replace their antiquated courthouse in the 1920s. In preparation, they hit the road and visited several in western Indiana for inspiration. Loaded with money from the coal mining industry1, they eventually wound up at the Vermillion County Courthouse in Newport. By 1926, they had their own replica of it courtesy of its actual architect, John B. Bayard2.
Okay, maybe it’s not an exact copy. In fact, the Sullivan County Courthouse is much more ornate. It includes an impressive central rotunda, a stained glass dome hidden within its attic, two-story columns, and lots and lots of marble. Even so, the courthouses still look similar from the outside. In fact, they looked identical to me when I first visited them several months apart.
The current Sullivan County Courthouse is the community’s fifth. Courts were temporarily held in Carlisle, where the county was first established3. The town of Merom was officially designated county seat in 1819, and a log courthouse was built. Both Carlisle and Merom were far from the geographical center of the county, so Sullivan was founded in 1841 to ease the travel burden of the area’s rural residents.
The current Sullivan County Courthouse is the community’s fifth. Courts were temporarily held in Carlisle, where the county was first established3. The town of Merom was officially designated county seat in 1819, and a log courthouse was built. Both Carlisle and Merom were far from the geographical center of the county, so Sullivan was founded in 1841 to ease the travel burden of the area’s rural residents.
Two years after Sullivan was established, officials completed a second log courthouse. The building was lost to fire in 1850, and Edwin May designed the county’s third in 1852. Originally 40×60 feet, the courthouse was extensively modified by Charles William Greenly in 1872 to feature extended wings, a shallow dome, and an enormous lantern4. The building was a dead ringer of the Posey County Courthouse in Mt. Vernon, and it’s the one officials replaced in 1926.
Built of steel and concrete but dressed in limestone, the current Sullivan County Courthouse was completed after two years of work. The 120×105-foot building’s western facade is considered its main front. It’s an intriguing mix of Beaux Arts features like limestone swags and garlands, radiating window headers, and Corinthian cornice with Neoclassical lines, symmetry, and a hierarchy of spaces5.
Aside from Bayard’s sister design in Vermillion County, the building strongly resembles the Carroll, Spencer, and Pike County Courthouses in Delphi, Rockport, and Petersburg. It’s incredible, but of the twenty-three Indiana courthouses built between 1900 and 1930, only the Allen County Courthouse in Fort Wayne exceeded the cost of Sullivan County’s.
Much of the funds went to the building’s interior, where John Bayard’s original design is well-preserved. The basement remains utilitarian, while the ground floor features an auditorium with raked seating and a proscenium stage at its west end. The first floor contains most of the county’s offices, while the circuit courtroom takes up most of the second floor. It features a huge oak backdrop behind the judge’s bench6.
The showcase of the Sullivan County Courthouse is its rotunda, which features a compass design built into the tile and a lavish stained glass dome. Decorative moldings incorporating floral, egg-and-dart, and dentils support it via eight square columns.
The glass itself is initially divided into four sections. Each is grouped into five segments as the dome extends outward for twenty partitions at its far reaches. The shapes of arrows, circles, and chains are apparent within the glass, as is a row of five-pointed stars encircling the dome in its middle section.
Back outside, it’s hard to get a good picture of the courthouse because of all the trees around it it! Nevertheless, the building anchors downtown Sullivan more prominently than its height would imply: at one point, the courthouse was surrounded by commercial buildings, but only the southern and western sides were full when I visited in 2016.
Although some of Sullivan’s early commercial structures no longer remain, the Sullivan County Courthouse still stands proudly on its prominent Shelbyville Square after nearly a hundred years of use. It’s remarkable that the opulent building still stands in such pristine condition in a town of 4,200 people. Clearly, the courthouse serves as a point of pride for the people it serves.
TL;DR
Sullivan County (pop. 21,223, 69/92)
Sullivan (pop. 4,217)
80/92 photographed
Built: 1926
Cost: $500,000 ($6.78 million in 2016)
Architect: John B. Bayard
Style: Beaux Arts
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height:2.5 stories
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 7/10/2016
Sources Cited
1 Counts, Will; Jon Dilts (1991). The 92 Magnificent Indiana Courthouses. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Print.
2 National Register of Historic Places, Sullivan County Courthouse, Sullivan, Sullivan County, Indiana, National Register # 08001213.
3 Enyart, David. “Sullivan County” Indiana County Courthouse Histories. ACPL Genealogy Center, 2010-2018. Web. Retrieved 1/15/20.
4 Courthouse History. Keith Vincent. 2018. Web. Retrieved 1/15/19.
5 Klein, Fogle, & Etienne, “Clues to American Architecture” 1986. Starrhill Press [Washington, D.C.]. Print.
6 Indiana Landmarks (2013). Sullivan County. Indianapolis. Indiana Landmarks. Web. Retrieved 1/15/20.
