My dad spent some time working in marketing for an insurance agency in Celina, Ohio, after my parents divorced. It was more than an hour’s drive, but one weekend, my mom took us up to visit him at the office. We passed the astonishing Grand Lake and vaguely recall some of Dad’s office trappings, but I couldn’t remember the courthouse! As it turns out, it’s a real Neoclassical gem just block away from dad’s old workplace.
Mercer County was formed in 1820 from land once part of Darke and Shelby Counties, but it wasn’t until 1824 that it was officially established and organized. In the beginning, the village of St. Marys served as the county seat. Courts were held in a tavern owned by John Pickerell until 18291, when a 20 x 24 foot frame courthouse was built by William McCluney2.
Celina named the seat in 1840, and St. Marys became part of Auglaize County eight years later3. The first courthouse in Celina, a two-story building, was completed in 1841. Unfortunately, the structure rapidly proved too small for the growing community. Officials resolved to build a 58 x 70 foot courthouse, three stories high, in 1866. An architect named Rumbaugh submitted plans for the new building, which was completed in 18694.
Mercer County’s third courthouse featured a tall, corner belfry with a clock set deep into a steep, mansard roof5. A shorter tower sprouted from the opposite corner to help frame its simple front entrance. Were it not for the placement of the cupolas, the building would have been a dead-ringer for Indiana’s Henry County Courthouse built around the same time.
The fourth courthouse was designed by Peter M. Hulsken. Born in the Netherlands in 1881, Hulsken attended the Royal Academy of Amsterdam and, later, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He moved to the United States at twenty-four and began to work in the Detroit offices of Albert Kahn. Later, he relocated to Lima, Ohio, where he practiced architecture for forty years6.
Hulsken was better known for theaters than governmental buildings7, but his Mercer County Courthouse is a true landmark. Its exterior features Bedford limestone walls with forty-foot columns that measure four feet wide. Six of the massive pillars frame the main entrance, while four more stand at the sides and rear. Each is topped by an egg-and-dart design and a crest. An olive branch wreath weaves across the limestone above8.
I didn’t know this when I visited, but the courthouse guarded my griffins, mythological creatures with a lion’s body and the head and wings of an eagle. They’re outside on the building’s lamps, on the solid brass chandelier that dangles over the third-floor stairway, on more lamps in the Common Pleas Courtroom, and on friezes in the rotunda9.
Its constituents love Mercer County’s courthouse today, but that wasn’t always so. On the day the building was dedicated, a minor uproar ensued after citizens discovered that a stonecutter had substituted an old-style “V” in place of a modern “U” in the inscription “COUNTY COURTHOUSE” above its massive columns. Later, it was determined that the blueprints were correct and that the stonemason had gone rogue as he surreptitiously made the change. The letters were never fixed, and the county courthouse remains the “COVNTY COVRTHOVSE” a hundred years after it was built10.
Under its columns, the building’s bronze doors open into a rotunda featuring massive, marble panels quarried from Vermont, Tennessee, and Alabama. A monumental stairway with an Italian black marble railing pirals through the center of the courthouse, providing access to its main offices. The rotunda is crowned by a stained glass dome with 112 plaster rosettes11. Fortunately, the majority of the courthouse remains unchanged from when it was first built.
I’ve gone on and on about courthouses that feature additions both good and bad. That’s why it’s such a breath of fresh air to encounter a courthouse that has remained largely untouched by renovations or expansions. There’s something uniquely satisfying about experiencing a building in its original form, unmarred by later additions that can sometimes disrupt its architectural harmony. It allows you to appreciate the design, craftsmanship, and vision of the era in which it was built, as intended by its architect. For all intents and purposes, the Mercer County Courthouse in Celina, Ohio, is that building.
TL;DR
Mercer County (pop. 51,113, 48/88)
Celina (pop. 12,694).
Built: 1923
Cost: $500,000 ($9.2 million today)
Architect: Peter Hulsken
Style: Neoclassical
Courthouse Square: Shelbyville Square
Height: 3 stories
Current Use: County offices and courts
Photographed: 7/1/18
Sources Cited
1 Scranton, S.S. (1907). History of Mercer County, Ohio and Representative Citizens. Biographical Publishing Company [Chicago]. Book.
2 (See footnote 1).
3 Auglaize County, Ohio Atlas and History (1917). Magee Brother Publishing [Piqua]. Book.
4 Deacon, J. “Mercer County”. American Courthouses. 2008. Web. Retrieved December 23, 2024.
5 Courthouse History. Keith Vincent. 2018. Web. Retrieved October 27, 2024.
6 Hume, M. (2002-2024). Peter Hulsken.Theatre Architects. Historic Theatre Photography. Web. Retrieved December 23, 2024.
7 (See footnote 6).
8 National Register of Historic Places, Celina Main Street Commercial Historic District, Celina, Mercer County, Ohio, National Register # 79002822.
10 (See footnote 4).
11 (See footnote 8).
