Photos of Indiana's Historic Courthouses, along with some others
I love collections and always have, at least since my parents labeled me “Mass Destructo Man” in my earliest days when I’d tear around the house, ransacking the place to find like objects to sort by size, color, shape, and so on. From youth to adulthood, my favorite hobbies have always been collections. I especially […]
Read More Darke County, Ohio- Greenville (1874-)Welp, I guess it’s time to start Ohio. Want to hear a terrible metaphor? I was thinking about pickles the other day, which is somewhat unusual for me but certainly not unheard of after spending nearly four years as an expert in home canning through the Ball brand. The Defiance County Courthouse in Defiance, Ohio […]
Read More Defiance County, Ohio- Defiance (1873-)A version of this post appeared in September, 2019. Over the past year, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was in the national news more than any other Indiana mayor in the past fifty years aside from maybe Dick Lugar. That means South Bend, the city that bestowed Pete’s title, has been too. On national TV, South Bend […]
Read More St. Joseph County- South Bend (1967-69, 2015-)As far as courthouses go, the 1970s represented a decade of debauchery for officials in Lake County: They were just plain nutty about them! First came a new superior courthouse for Hammond in 1972 that replaced an elderly 1903 structure. 1974 saw the venerable courthouse in Crown Point overtaken by a sprawling administrative complex northwest […]
Read More Lake County- East Chicago (1979-)A few weeks ago, my mom and I toured the Levi Coffin house. For those of you who missed studying Indiana history in fourth grade, Coffin was a Quaker abolitionist who moved to Newport, Indiana at the convergence of three main escape routes for fugitive slaves in 1826. There, he helped as many as 2,000 […]
Read More Vermillion County- Newport (1924-)My friends know I’m a big fan of Showbiz Pizza Place. Remember them? The company, a subsidiary of Topeka Inn Management (then the country’s largest Holiday Inn franchisee) was the precursor to, competitor with, and -ultimately- savior of the Chuck E. Cheese brand and featured their own menagerie of robotic animal musicians to provide each […]
Read More Greene County- Bloomfield (1885/2006-)I started posting again last week after a long hiatus, and I talked about what can happen when changes occur- first within the context of this blog, where I introduced some new rules that I think will help me clamp down on its focus. Changes were more paramount, though, in the case of Cass County, […]
Read More Fayette County- Connersville (1849/1891-)I’ve been doing my project to document every historic courthouse in Indiana for nearly seven years- 2,423 days, to be exact! It’s been harder than you’d think, progressing slowly in fits, stops, starts, and resets along the way. Friends who started the journey with me fell by the wayside only to be picked up at […]
Read More Montgomery County- Crawfordsville (1876-)As I’m happy to repeatedly assert without concession, we’re lucky to have so many historic courthouses in Indiana. But that’s not to say that keeping the venerable structures around has been easy! Courthouses across the state have been subject to wrecking balls, ugly renovations, tornadoes, and even bombings. It’s quite a portfolio of maladies that […]
Read More Porter County- Valparaiso (1883/1937-)So far in Indiana, we’ve lost 26 historic courthouses to fire1, seven to disrepair, and one to a damn tornado. Fortunately, the losses have died off in the last thirty years, and the trend’s actually reversed. Today, we’re left with three out of three remaining art deco courthouses in the state. If Robert Gray had […]
Read More Howard County- Kokomo (1937-)