Elizabeth, New Jersey

Union County rules have been dictated from this site for well over 300 years. The first English-speaking Colonial Assembly in New Jersey met in a building here on May 26, 1668. That rough frame structure served as church, courthouse and meeting place and was enlarged several times before a Tory raiding party from Staten Island destroyed the building on January 28, 1870. After the War for Independence it was rebuilt but burned again in 1808. The courthouse that replaced it in 1810 was considered one of the finest in new Jersey. When Union County became the state’s last, breaking away from Essex County in 1857, an addition was constructed.

The new county was a success from the start and growth by the end of the century dictated a wholly new building which was provided in the Classical Revival style by New York architects W.S. Ackerman and Albert Randolph Ross in 1905. The new courthouse was dominated by a quartet of massive Corinthian columns on the outside and an impressive rotunda within. But even this grand new building could not keep up with Union County. By 1925 a seven-floor annex was added and in 1931 a 17-floor tower was tacked on at the cost of $1.2 million.

Decorating the grounds of the Union County Courthouse are a memorial to city firefighters and a cannon, cast in Strasburg in 1758, that was presented by General George Washington to troops from Elizabethtown for their service in their capture of the British position at Stony Point on the Hudson River in 1779.