Update: The Clark County Commissioners consented to a judgment on April 10, 2011, agreeing to repay $20,000 of the $57,500 grant they had received from the State of Missouri to renovate the old courthouse they had demolished. Your tax dollars at work. No word on whether they ever found a buyer for the cupola, or if it was ever really for sale.
Gotta love Post-Modernism, huh? Why, the new courthouse looks just as good as the old one! OK, I’m being sarcastic. I wonder how long this new one will last? By the way, for all of us sentimental types, they saved the cupola from the old building. Last I heard it was for sale.
UGH! The fenestratinon, it buuuurrrnsss! Good god, where does one even start? The sphincter-sized windows (as they relate to the rest of the facade)? The “quoins”? The over-sized, all-out-of-proportion, OOOOH, look it’s a courthouse columns? (Bet they aren’t even real limestone). The superfluous and wholly anachronistic widow’s walk? The flag pole practically shoved up the facade wazoo? (Seriously, who puts a flag-pole this close to a public building? Put it off to the side; and maybe get a taller one, saaaay…taller than the building!)
Maybe it’s energy efficient, and has a tight envelope, like a Passivhaus, with swales to collect the run-off from the parking lot…
Who am I kidding?!
“Sphincter-sized windows” That’s pure gold!
Glad you enjoyed it. You have my permission to use it freely.
What the what?! I realize that Illinois is broke due to their ineptitude but if they needed to save money this BADLY why not just go nuclear and build a box with red iron and tin and call it a day. That would save big $$$ and they wouldn’t look as if they tried and failed so miserably.
Kahoka, MO. But still, this thing is a collection of parts, erected atop a foundation. Like the comment about what is essentially the defacto method of cheap construction for farms, small businesses and storage in rural areas (and some urban/suburban).
I think you bring up a good point; rural areas never had any problem building quality buildings in the past, but everything new I see in the country is junk. What happened?
People there probably think it is nice. So many new buildings in that part of the state now are “Morton” buildings, basically aluminum sheds. If you were to criticism the architecture of the building, they’d look at you like an alien. Northern Missouri is hand-to-mouth country, poor like Southern Missouri but without any of the quasi-Appalachian gothic charm.