"Wayne County Courthouse, Richmond, Indiana" Richmond Things to Do Tip by deecat

Jill and I were amazed when we saw a huge edifice from a distance as we came into Richmond, Indiana. Just what could it be, we asked. We parked our car and explored.
We discovered that it was the Wayne County Courthouse that was built in 1890 to replace a two-story brick building built in the early 1870s. This is of Romanesque Revival design and of grand proportions. It is the largest Romanesque courthouse in Indiana!

The building has horizontal lines, rounded arches and masses of materials of rough-cut stone, which was popularized by Henry Hobson Richardson..

Cincinnati architect, James W. McLaughlin, designed the building, which required r600 car loads of Indiana limestone and 3 million bricks to construct it".
125 stone cutters were used, and steam powered hoists were used to lift the stone into place.

Other materials used were "gray granite from Concord, New Hampshire (used for the base of the building), lighter gray oolitic limestone from Lawrence County, Indiana (most of the rest of the building), and red roof tile from Akron, Ohio". The recent roof, however, is gray slate. While we visited, they were putting in new, double-pane, energy efficient windows.

Inside we discovered a grand marble staircase and an open well surrounded by open galleries. The Wainscoting is marble; the woodwork is oak.

We were told that in 1976-1978, the county refurbished this courthouse and then completed construction on a new administration building just east of the 1893 building.

While we were inside the building, I took a photograph of O.P. Morton, Indiana's War Governor..