Read time: 5 min.

Taking photos of courthouses is generally a simple proposition. My preferred method is to head downtown, find the dome or clock tower, and start snapping away. Unfortunately, modern justice centers present a problem: in the absence of a landmark, sometimes it’s hard to figure out where a county’s courts are held! Such was the case when I headed to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, in Isabella County. I wound up taking photos of the wrong building! Fortunately, I managed to find something more interesting.

Isabella County was named after Queen Isabella I, who, along with her husband Ferdinand, funded Columbus’s expedition to the New World¹. Established in 1831, it remained administratively attached to neighboring counties until 1859, when its population and infrastructure had grown enough to warrant formal organization. At first, the community of Isabella Center was named the county seat. There, courts were held in a building that served quadruple duty as a courthouse, store, hotel, and residence². 

In 1860, the county seat was relocated to an uninhabited tract of land a mile down the Chippewa River. Boosters gained favor with the Native Americans there by giving them land near the new county seat³, and the village of Mt. Pleasant was established. It remains the county seat today. 

Unfortunately, officials struggled to fund a courthouse for their new county seat. David Ward donated five acres for governmental buildings, but all the county could afford was a cheap courthouse built by W.H. Nelson for $140⁴. That primitive building served as the Isabella County Courthouse until 1876, when commissioners received $10,000 from the state after an auditing error was discovered from when Clare County detached from Isabella.

Local officials earmarked the money for a new courthouse and combined it with $2,000 donated by their constituents and another thousand dollars collected in taxes⁵. Soon, architect Frederick W. Hollister was chosen to design the county’s third courthouse⁶. A New York native born in 1847, Hollister began his career at seventeen under the tutelage of Saginaw architect John B. Dibble. In 1869, he joined Bay City’s Porter and Watkin and later purchased their Saginaw office. Known for his eclectic style influenced by the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne modes, Hollister drew plans for several courthouses and 169 school buildings over his lengthy career7. 

Hollisters’ Isabella County Courthouse was an elaborate structure seventy-one feet long by fifty-seven feet wide, with a tall cupola that rose eighty feet into the air. Most of its rooms featured twelve-foot ceilings, but the courtroom reached soaring heights up to twenty-four feet. Unfortunately, the building was too small nearly from the get-go. After years of discussion, an $18,000 project added substantial space to the cramped building’s corners⁸. 

Unfortunately, the addition did little to fix the situation. In the late 1960s, the structure was falling apart! By 1970, officials had hired Wakely-Kushner-Wakley-Associates to design a modern County Building. The 1876 courthouse was razed, and its cupola was relocated to the Isabella County Fairgrounds. Known as the Isabella County Building, the modern courthouse was completed in 1972. A three-story glass, stone, and concrete structure, the building faces west where a main entrance at the southwest corner features a glass lobby.

The County Building is pretty non-descript, even as far as modern judicial centers go. Unfortunately, its replacement isn’t much more interesting. I didn’t realize it then, but the building I photographed only lasted twenty-eight years as the county courthouse. Although the 45,000-square-foot structure was far larger than its predecessor, it, too, proved too tiny for county business. Adding insult to injury, the new building also suffered from a design that forced everyone in the courthouse to occupy the same hallways! Officials anticipated issues and built an even more modern courthouse in 2000.

The $6 million courthouse sits just northwest of its predecessor, which now houses the county’s administrative offices. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of it. I did, however, discover the decapitated cupola of the 1876 courthouse, which had been moved back to the site by the time I visited. It’s a striking structure that blessedly adds some visual intrigue to one of the most nondescript courthouse squares I’ve visited.

I’ve always admired relics from old courthouses, whether they’re statues gracing modern squares or vintage cupolas nestled in private backyards. I’d never encountered an antique cupola on the grounds of a modern courthouse, though, and finding one in Mt. Pleasant was a real surprise! Discoveries like that remind me of the layers of history that often lie just beneath the surface. Aside from adding a landmark presence to Mt. Pleasant’s modern square, the cupola helps Isabella County residents connect the stories of the past to the reality of the present.

TL;DR
Isabella County (pop. 63,870, 32/83)
Mt. Pleasant (pop. 21,729)
8/83 photographed
Built: 1972
Cost: Unknown
Architect: Wakely-Kushner-Wakley-Associates
Style: Modern
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville
Height: 3 stories
Current Use: County offices
Photographed: 4/27/2018

Sources Cited
1 Bibliography on Isabella County (n.d.). Clarke Historical Library. Central Michigan University [Mt. Pleasant]. Web. Retrieved October 27, 2024.
2 Fedynsky, J. (2010). Michigan’s County Courthouses. The University of Michigan Press [Ann Arbor]. book. 
3 (See footnote 2).
4 Deacon, J. “Isabella County”. American Courthouses. 2008. Web. Retrieved October 27, 2024.
5 (See footnote 2).
6 Courthouse History. Keith Vincent. 2018. Web. Retrieved October 27, 2024.
7 Who is Fred Hollister? (2020, June 24). The Castle Museum of Saginaw County History [Saginaw]. Web. Retrieved October 27, 2024. 
8 Isabella County Courthouse Postcards (n.d.). The HIstorical Marker Database. Web. Retrieved October 27, 2024.