Wayne County Courthouse (Richmond, Indiana)

 courthouse, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places

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301 East Main Street
Richmond, IN 47374-4253
www.in.gov/judiciary/2882.htm

The style chosen for the courthouse was Romanesque Revival, popularized by Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), a flamboyant graduate of Harvard and student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1860-62. He is often termed the father of modern architecture in the United States. His designs emphasized horizontal lines, rounded arches and masses of materials, often rough-cut stone. The Wayne County courthouse shows many similarities to the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania finished in 1887. Materials were gray granite from Concord, New Hampshire, lighter gray oolitic limestone from Lawrence County, Indiana, and red roof tile from Akron, Ohio. The most recent roof is gray slate. The Courthouse was completed March 1893.

History

After trips to Cleveland, Lima, Findlay and Troy in Ohio, the Wayne County commissioners decided in 1890 to replace the courthouse in Richmond -- a two-story brick building built in the early 1870s --with a Romanesque courthouse of grand proportions. It would become the largest Romanesque courthouse in Indiana.

The low bid came from Aaron Campfield at $274,425, excluding electrical work. Campfield had built courthouses in Randolph County (1875-1877) and Hamilton County (1878-1879), but neither were as complex nor as large as this job. By the time the project was finished, the total cost probably exceeded $400,000. Architecture scholar Paul Goeldner estimates the actual cost probably was $435,807 -- making it a major public works project of the 1890s.

The Cincinnati architect, James W. McLaughlin, designed the building, and it required 600 car loads of Indiana limestone and 3 million bricks to construct it. The project employed 125 stone cutters on site to cut the stone to fit, and Campfield used steam powered hoists to lift the stone into place.
The interior includes a grand marble staircase and an open well surrounded by open galleries. Wainscoting is marble and the woodwork is oak.

In 1976-1978 the county refurbished the courthouse and completed construction of a new administration building just east of the 1893 building. The new building is L-shaped with sloping glass walls and now houses most of the county offices. Upon completion of the courthouse renovation in 1978, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.