Many communities built landmark courthouses in response to newfound economic status. Money -or the prospect of it- burned a hole in their pockets! Occasionally, cities experienced the opposite when businesses rose to meet the status of their existing courthouse. Bryan, Ohio, was once such community. In Williams County, the area’s industry grew up under the watchful eye of its amazing courthouse.
Williams County was organized in 1820, four years before it was officially detached from parts of the surrounding area1. The community made do with a succession of minor courthouses over the years, including an 1842 Greek Revival structure built by Giles Tomlinson2, until the dawn of the 1890s. That’s when officials hired Toledo architect Edward Oscar Fallis to design a courthouse suitable for the new century.
By my count, Fallis was responsible for seven courthouses across the Midwest. All but one are still standing, and you could make a day trip to five if you started in Bryan. Fallis’ buildings followed an interesting stylistic progression: his first two in Monroe, Michigan and Rushville, Illinois were built in the Renaissance Revival style3. They featured low-pitched roofs, classical columns and pilasters, and parapets to hide their rooflines.
Fallis’ next two courthouses in Adrian, Michigan, and Independence, Kansas, were much different than their older siblings. Done up in red brick with heavy Romanesque Revival influences, the buildings incorporate round arches, towers, and complicated rooflines. Fallis may have continued designing courthouses that way for the rest of his life were it not for the emergence of Henry Hobson Richardson.
Along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, some consider Richardson part of the “recognized trinity of American architecture4.” Not quite content with what the Romanesque Revival style had to offer, he singlehandedly forced its evolution into a new mode named Richardson Romanesque.
Richardson Romanesque buildings blended Romanesque Revival elements with the architect’s own preferences like square towers and parapets. E.O. Fallis was an early adopter, and his courthouses in Albion, Paulding, and Bryan followed Richardson’s lead.
In particular, the Williams County Courthouse in Bryan exudes a sense of permanence from deep within its three-foot-thick walls. Outside, it features rounded corner turrets, paired columns, and corbelled arches without visible keystones. Scottish workmen cut its Berea and Amherst stone on site, which was used to accentuate the building’s base and belt courses.
My favorite features rise up from the roof of the courthouse. Its asymmetrical north and south faces feature large, open turrets, and the building’s square clock tower reaches 170 feet. Its nearly as tall as AT&T’s poured-concrete Long Line tower six miles northwest5! I first glimpsed it from three miles away, where US-127 and OH-15 converge.
The Williams County Courthouse was fifteen years old in 1906 when Arthur G. Spangler purchased a bakery in Defiance and moved it to Bryan6. Two years later, Dr. Henry Winzeler founded the Ohio Art Company to make metal picture frames in a facility across town7. Under the watchful eye of Fallis’ Richardson-influenced courthouse, both firms experienced significant growth over the next century.
Today, the Spangler Candy Company makes Dum Dums, Bit-O-Honey, Smarties, NECCO wafers, and the ubiquitous and disgusting Circus Peanuts. Most people know Ohio Art for their famous Etch-a-Sketch line of toys, a brand that they sold in 2016. Today, the company is a big player in the metal lithography arena.
The Williams County Courthouse has reigned through all the community’s commercial changes. A hundred and thirty-three years after it was built, it still stands as a landmark created in advance of, not in response to, the expansion of the county’s industry. The courthouse remains one of Ohio’s finest, and its constituents have much to be proud of.
TL;DR
Williams County (pop. 36,816, 66/88)
Bryan (pop. 8,251
Built: 1891
Cost: $185,000 (5.29 million today)
Architect: E.O. Fallis
Style: Richardson Romanesque
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 170 feet
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 4/1/18 (I think)
Sources Cited
1 “Ohio: Individual County Chronologies”. Ohio Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. The Newberry Library. 2007. Web. Retrieved 2/8/21.
2 Courthouse History. Keith Vincent. 2018. Web. Retrieved 2/8/21.
3 Deacon, J. “Williams County”. American Courthouses. 2008. Web. Retrieved 2/8/21.
4 O’Gorman, James F. “Three American Architects: Richardson, Sullivan, and Wright, 1865-1915” University of Chicago Press [Chicago]. 1991. Print.
5 Transmitter Characteristics (n.d.). Antennasearch. Web. Retrieved December 27, 2023.
6 “A timeline of some of the notable events in our history from our founding in 1906 to the present day.” The Spangler Candy Company [Bryan]. 2021. Web. Retrieved 2/8/21.
7 “The Origins of Our Success” The Ohio Art Company [Bryan]. 2021. Web. Retrieved 2/8/21.
