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.

Newberry, South Carolina

This building, the fourth in a series of five Newberry County courthouses, was used for court sessions between 1852 and 1906. It is an outstanding example of Greek Revival architecture in stuccoed brick highlighted by six fluted Tuscan columns which support a massive triangular pediment. During Reconstruction, Osborn Wells remodelled the courthouse, including a bas-relief mounted on the frontal pediment. It depicts the spirit of the prostrate state with a United States eagle holding an uprooted palmetto tree in its talons while, perched upon the tree roots, a gamecock crows defiantly (it originally sported a gold coin for an eye). At the top of the tree a dove bears an olive branch.

Reading, Pennsylvania

This massive and ornate 19-story Art Deco granite Berks County Courthouse, built in 1932 to last a century, at a cost of $2,000,000 during the Depression, stands 308 feet tall, making it the tallest courthouse in the United States, and also the most expensive building in Berks County. It is also the second-tallest municipal building in the state of Pennsylvania. Only Philadelphia’s City Hall is taller.

Cambridge, Maryland

Cambridge born-and-bred James Wallace was trained in the law and member of the Maryland house of delegates  in the 1850s. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he helped raise the First Maryland Volunteers (Eastern Shore) in August 1861 and took command as its colonel. The unit was intended to protect Union interests on the Eastern shore and elsewhere in Maryland but in July 1863, the First found itself at Gettysburg fighting on the third day of the battle around Culp’s Hill. In the regiment’s only day of pitched battle during its entire service, and with Wallace in command, it met and mauled the First Maryland Regiment of the Confederate States Army that contained many of their friends and neighbors from coastal Maryland. The regiment, and its colonel, ended its enlistment and mustered out two days before Christmas in 1863.

By the late 1800s Colonel James Wallace began packing oysters. He was the first to start raw shucking and steam packing of oysters in Cambridge, building, with his son, a nationally known business. The Wallace family mansion stood here on heights known as “The Hill.” The property was acquired in 1838 and remained in the family for 70 years. The City purchased the mansion in 1940 and eventually razed it for office space and the Rescue Fire Company. The Colonial Revival building was erected in 1949, dominated by a three-tier tower.The first tier is made of brick with stone quoins embellishing the corners. There is a balustrade with turned spindles around the upper edge of this tier. The second tier is also wooden with a spindle-turned balustrade. Above this is an octagonally-shaped tier with tall, narrow arched openings.

Pendleton, South Carolina

This Greek Revival structure has been the centerpiece of Pendleton life for over 180 years. It is the oldest Farmers Hall still in continuous use in the United States. The ground floor has always been reserved for commercial trade and on the second floor was the town meeting hall. The village green was the site of the old courthouse; the quartet of sturdy Doric columns were added in 1848. It was in this hall that Thomas Green Clemson campaigned for a state agricultural college that is Clemson University today. John C. Calhoun, a leading advocate of states’ rights in the early 1800s a Vice-Presidnet under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, was among the members of the Farmer’s Society.

East Greenwich, Rhode Island

When East Greenwich was established as the Kent County seat in 1750 the first courthouse was constructed on this site. In 1775, it was the practice of the General Assembly to rotate among the five Rhode Island counties. When the wheel landed on East Greenwich in 1764 the legislature established the school that would become Brown University; in 1775 the legislature passed the resolution that created the United States Navy. That original building was replaced in 1804 with this handsome Federal-style structure built by Oliver Wickes, a Revolutionary War veteran. Wickes added some Revolutionary-era styling as well with the square tower and decorative corner quoins. History continued to be made here (or at least close by) - in September 1842 the convention for the framing of the Rhode Island Constitution met here but when the heating system failed the meeting was adjourned and the final vote actually taken in the Methodist church several blocks away.

In the early days the courtyard had on one side of its walk a liberty pole and on the other a whipping post. The building, by far the largest structure in Kent County in its day, s listed in the National Register of Historic Places. After 1854 the General Assembly restricted its activities to Providence and Newport but the building continued in use as a Courthourse and cases were heard here until 1978. After many years of vacancy and neglect the Courthouse was given a $2.3 million make-over for re-use as the East Greenwich Town Hall.

Honesdale, Pennsylvania

The first county courthouse was in Bethany, the county seat from 1800 to 1841. During the legislative sessions of 1840-41, Senator Ebenezer Kingsbury quietly secured the passage of an act for removal. Honesdale became the county seat and on May 4, 1841 the county commissioners accepted a plot of land opposite the public square for the county buildings. The land was a joint gift of the Jason Torrey estate and the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company.

After many years of discussion of the need for a new building, the commissioners adopted a resolution to begin construction in 1876. J.A. Wood of New York was selected as architect and the massive stone walls of the foundation were begun. During the next two years, little progress was made on the structure as “The Courthouse Wars” raged. Taxpayers were angry, legal disputes abounded  and political disputes flared. Finally the commissioners resolved to complete the building and $130,000 later, the new Italianate courthouse was ready in 1880.

Woonsocket, Rhode Island

The oldest section of this building was constructed by Edward Harris in 1856 and was known as the Harris Block. Built in the Italiante style, it was Woonsocket’s first major commercial building and the first public library in Rhode Island. Abraham Lincoln spoke in the building’s Harris Hall in 1860. In 1889, a rugged, granite clad addition in the Richardson Romanesque style was added. The building became Woonsocket’s City Hall in 1902.

Winnsboro, South Carolina

Fairfield County’s Court House was built in 1822 by William McCreight under the supervision of Robert Mills, constructed with English ballast brick brought to Charleston. It was remodeled in 1939, retaining the Mills design but adding two rear wings and the flying stairways.

Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania

Throughout its planning and construction in the first decade of the 20th century, controversy and scandal swirled around the Beaux Arts courthouse. Pittsburgh architect F. J. Osterling originally designed it to be placed on Public Square. It was finally completed by architects McCormick and French, who designed the lavish interior with its stunning rotunda. Step inside to see the history of the county illustrated in mosaics and murals.

Built during the period of Wilkes-Barre’s greatest prosperity, the Luzerne Court House is now a treasured local landmark. The site of the Court House was once the Public Basin of the Wyoming Division of the North Branch Canal. From 1834 to 1881, when the last canal boat left Wilkes-Barre, the canal was a major means of transporting coal and other commodities in and out of the Wyoming Valley.

On the courthouse lawn are memorials to the county’s war dead and the anchor of the USS Wilkes-Barre, a World War II cruiser. The nearby cast-iron deer is a relic of the 1850s, when the courthouse sat on Public Square. Local wags would commonly cite the deer as a source of courthouse gossip in newspaper columns.

Gloucester, Massachusetts

Gloucester built a substantial brick Town Hall with an imposing projecting clock tower on this site in 1868. The next year a disastrous fire leveled the buidling, taking with it a panorama local artist Fitz Hugh Lane had bequeathed to the town.

Built in 1870 on the foundation of the previous structure, this brick-and-stone High Victorian-style building by Bryant & Rogers of Boston features twin towers over the Warren Street entrance. The ornate clock tower rises 194 feet above sea level and is a conspicuous landmark from land or sea. Murals reflecting the city’s history adorn walls in the main lobby and on the third floor.

Waterbury, Connecticut

Waterbury’s first City Hall, built on West Main Street facing the Green in 1869, went up in flames in 1912, torched by an arsonist. Cass Gilbert, one of America’s foremost architects of monumental buildings, won the commission for this replacement and work was begun in 1914. Gilbert used Vermont marble and North Haven brick to create a Colonial design, built around a rectangular court laid out as a sunken Italian garden. The lower story features white marble laid in rusticated courses while the upper stories are red brick with white marble Corinthian pilasters. In recent years, suffering from years of neglect and vandalism, the building has been condemned by the City’s own building department. Preservationists are at work to get City Hall to see its 100th birthday.

Salisbury, Maryland

Following the partition in 1867 of Somerset and Worcester counties in order to create Wicomico County, various government offices were scattered around Salisbury’s central business district. In 1878 E.M. Butz designed this Victorian Gothic courthouse - built on the site of the historic Byrd Tavern, a famous hostelry in stage coach days - consolidated the city services, including the fire department and a jail. The exuberant facade features patterned and colored bricks with stone inserts. After fire destroyed the entire downtown area in 1886, it was the only building left standing. Since the 1930s the Courthouse has seen three enlargements.