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Today, I’m going to take a crack at describing the monumental cluster of structures that comprise the Franklin County Government Center in Columbus, Ohio. Together, they represent the Franklin County Courthouse.

Columbus is Ohio’s biggest city. It’s also the state capitol. After Ohio became a state in 1803, arguments between the area’s political leaders forced the capital to move from Chillicothe to Zanesville before it wound up in Chillicothe again. Keen to establish a city closer to the geographical center of the new state near prominent waterways, officials settled on naming the burgeoning community of Franklinton as the state government’s permanent home.

Columbus was founded just east of Franklinton in 1812. It soon surpassed Franklinton’s growth, and Columbus was named county seat in 1824. A $40,000 Greek Revival courthouse with columns and a simple clock tower was built in 1840¹. A common pleas courtroom was added to the south side of the building in 1852².

The courthouse was ravaged by a fire that destroyed most of the county’s records, and officials responded by hiring architect George Maetzel to erect a massive replacement in 1887. In 1951, the county added a $2.5 million annex. Unfortunately, the landmark courthouse was demolished in 1974 after structural faults became too costly to repair³.

The annex sits across the street from the modern government center and uses law enforcement offices. When I visited, the actual site of the historic courthouse was an unattractive hole in the ground called Dorrian Commons Park. The area was roped off when I was in town, and I didn’t take any pictures.

The first of Franklin County’s new Government Center buildings to be completed was a jail at the southwestern corner of West Mound and South Front streets in 1971. The ten-story Franklin County Hall of Justice was finished in 1973 and absorbed the common pleas court from the old courthouse⁴. Fashioned mostly of concrete, the building is typical of 1970s institutional architecture.

The 18-story Columbus Municipal Court Building stands behind the Hall of Justice. The Ohio General Assembly created the Columbus Municipal Court in 1916, and it was given countywide jurisdiction in 1955. In 1968, the court’s name was changed to the Franklin County Municipal Court, and eleven years later it moved from city hall to the modern, 245-foot-tall high-rise⁵. When I was there, the Municipal Court Building connected to the old courthouse annex by a skyway that crossed High Street.

The most prominent landmark at the Franklin County Government Center is what’s frequently called the Franklin County Courthouse. Officially known as the Franklin County Office Tower, the twenty-seven-story building rises 464 feet. It’s the seventh-tallest building in Columbus.

Work on the massive building started in 1989 and took two years to complete. At 644,000 square feet, the Franklin County Office Tower contains 25,000 cubic yards of concrete, more than 6,000 tons of steel, nearly 200,000 square feet of granite chipped precast, and 47,000 more square feet of conventional granite⁶. The skyscraper is home to most of Franklin County’s governmental offices. A two-story atrium facing High Street connects the tower to the Hall of Justice and the Municipal Court Building.

961,000 people called Franklin County home when the office tower was built. By 2010, the population had grown to 1.2 million! To serve their new constituents, officials built the $105 million Franklin County Common Pleas Courthouse in 2011. It’s a stunning building!

The new courthouse contains 325,000 square feet across seven stories and features twenty common pleas courtrooms, ten magistrate courtrooms, two special proceedings courtrooms, and a variety of offices. As part of the project, a $16 million entrance pavilion that compliments the new courthouse was added to the older Hall of Justice, along with a tunnel that connects the two buildings.

The construction of the new Common Pleas Courthouse actually meant more for the Hall of Justice than a spit-shine and tunnel: in 2011, it was abandoned! The Hall of Justice sat empty for three years until it was extensively renovated in a $48.3 million project⁸. The building looked brand new when I visited in 2019. Today, it’s known as the Michael J. Dorrian Building. Its first four stories are home to the Franklin County Common Pleas Court’s adult probation unit and the Franklin County Law Library, while its upper stories are empty pending anticipated future needs.

The Municipal Court Building will likely be the next structure in the complex to be altered. If plans go through, it’ll be renovated for the county sheriff’s department when a new structure takes the place of Dorrian Commons (the hole in the ground I mentioned earlier) and the old courthouse annex, now known as the Karnes Building⁹.

For now, though, we’ve got the current mix of buildings to consider when it comes to the Franklin County Courthouse in Columbus. They stand in stark contrast to previous structures! I hate that George Maetzel’s magnificent courthouse was destroyed, but three of his other designs remain standing across oh Ohio, and I’ve been to all of them. The Madison County Courthouse in London bears particular resemblance to Franklin County’s.

Although I lament the loss of any old courthouse, Ohio’s other largest cities all retain historic courthouses of their own. I’ve been to the ones in Dayton and Akron, and they’re great! The buildings that make up the Franklin County Government Center lack the ornamentation that first drew me to study historic courthouses, but they’re undeniably imposing. The day I visited was terrible for photos, and the cluster of skyscrapers looked like they belonged in Gotham City.

In terms of aesthetics, the Common Pleas Courthouse across the street is the best-executed modern courthouse I’ve ever seen! With any luck, Franklin County’s new Municipal Courthouse on the site of the 1887 structure will continue the momentum.

TL;DR
Franklin County Common Pleas Courthouse
Franklin County (pop. 1,317,000, 1/88)
Columbus (pop. 892,533).
Built: 2011
Cost: $105,000,000
Architect: Design Group and Arguitectonica
Style: Modern
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 7 stories
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 11/2/2019

Franklin County Office Tower
Built: 1991
Cost: $75,000,000
Architect: URS Consultants, Inc.
Style: Modern
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 464 feet
Current Use: County offices and some courts
Photographed: 11/2/2019

Franklin County Municipal Courts Building
Built: 1979
Cost: ?
Architect: Prindle & Patrick
Style: Modern
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 245 feet
Current Use: Municipal Courts
Photographed: 11/2/2019

Franklin County Hall of Justice
Built: 1973
Cost: ?
Architect: Prindle & Patrick
Style: Modern
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 10 stories
Current Use: County offices
Photographed: 11/2/2019

Sources Cited
1 “Old Franklin County Courthouse illustration” Columbus Metropolitan Library [Columbus]. Web. Retrieved 12/6/20.
2 Lee, Alfred Emory. History of the City of Columbus, Capital of Ohio, Volume 2
3 “Franklin County Courthouse” The Supreme Court of Ohio & The Ohio Judicial System. The Supreme Court of Ohio [Columbus]. Web. Retrieved 12/6/20.
4 Brown, Don L. “Administering a Successful Courthouse Project” Ohio Courthouse Symposium. Franklin County Administration. May 16, 2014. Web. Retrieved 12/7/20.
5 “History” Franklin County Municipal Court [Columbus]. Web. Retrieved 12/6/20.
6 Thrane, Susan W., Patterson, B., & Patterson, T. “County Courthouses of Ohio” Indiana University Press [Bloomington]. November 1, 2000. Print. 
7 “Franklin County Courthouse” Gilbane Building Company [Providence]. Web. Retrieved 12/7/20.
8 “County seeking bids for Hall of Justice renovations” Columbus Business First [Columbus]. February 1, 2013. Web. Retrieved 12/7/20.
9 “New Municipal Courthouse to replace Downtown park at South High and Mound streets” The Columbus Dispatch [Columbus]. 1/23/20. Web. Retrieved 12/6/20.