The restored Montgomery County, Indiana Courthouse (1876-)

Read time: 7 min.

The Montgomery County Courthouse was built in 1876. Sixty-five years later, an artist commissioned to paint the building noticed that the tower appeared to be leaning. It was wartime, and officials acted in haste by decapitating the courthouse, melting its bell down, and dumping the clockworks by the county highway barn. A local jeweler rescued the clock and put it up at his store downtown1, but the rest was history.

Continue reading “The restored Montgomery County, Indiana Courthouse (1876-)”

The Benton County, Indiana Courthouse (1874-)

Read time: 7 min.

An inept county government! Back-room, special-interest scheming! Second Empire masterpieces and decapitated clock towers! We’ve talked about several of these topics as they relate to county courthouses on their own, but they all dramatically combine to tell the story of Indiana’s Benton County Courthouse. In my view, the convergence of those intriguing stories makes it perhaps the most compelling of Indiana’s old courthouses.

Continue reading “The Benton County, Indiana Courthouse (1874-)”