We’ll start our tour of Perryville in the courthouse square, with the Perry County Courthouse, constructed in 1904. The architects were Caldwell and Drake of Columbus, Indiana and the building cost approximately $32,000. It is on the National Register. And of course there’s a statue of a Union soldier in the lawn out in front….
Tag: Courthouses
Perryville, Perry County, Missouri
We visited the town of Perryville in Perry County last weekend to check out the area and in particular the Shrine at St. Mary of the Barrens, which we’ll look at later this week. It’s an interesting and extremely old part of Missouri, with origins dating back to 1820, right around the founding of the…
Moline, Illinois
Moline is contiguous with Rock Island, so we entered the former from the west. Moline is famous for being the home of several industries, including an elevator manufacturer and John Deere, which everyone has heard of. First up is the former headquarters of Montgomery Elevator Company, which is now abandoned. The tower functioned as the…
Muscatine, Iowa, Part Three
We continue our walk around downtown Muscatine, passing by Wesley United Methodist Church, walking down West 4th Street. We then cut through a parking lot. The Muscatine County Courthouse was constructed in 1907 according to designs by J.E. Mills of Detroit. It was under rehabilitation when we went by, with what looks to be brand…
Some Notable Buildings, Jefferson City
I also saw some other interesting building scattered around the city. This school, high up on a hill in the center of town, caught my attention. It is abandoned, unfortunately. With such a prominent location and great vistas, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be great for redevelopment. Nearby on another summit is the Hugh…
Avenue F, Fort Madison, Iowa
We then cut down one block to Avenue F on 8th Street, where there are still a plethora of beautiful Nineteenth Century houses. In particular, there are many Second Empire and Italianate houses. Then there’s this massive church. Union Presbyterian Church was founded in 1838, and is one of the oldest of its kind in…
Old Courthouse, Reopened
The Old Courthouse is looking great following years of being closed for the first renovation in decades. All exhibitions were removed and replaced with new ones, such as this one on the courthouse’s role in freedom suits and slavery. Of course, that story would be incomplete without including Harriet and Dred Scott, whose nationally influential…
Side Streets, Downtown, Keokuk, Iowa
Off Main Street, there are many interesting buildings in downtown Keokuk, the majority in the Italianate style showing the rapid growth of the city after the Civil War. They are in varying degrees of repair and renovation. The building below is actually the YWCA. I suspect the building in the background could easily date from…
Former Municipal Courts
The behemoth of the old Four Courts, named after the building in Dublin and demolished long ago, was based off the Tuileries Palace in Paris, as I mentioned a couple of years ago. Its attached jail was quite a work of engineering and architecture, with a huge half rotunda and tiers of cells. Replacing it…
Lightwell, Carnahan Courthouse
I was in the Carnahan Courthouse recently on some unrelated business and I spotted an open window that looked into one of two lightwells for the building. I took these photos blindly, sticking my camera out the window. It’s interesting to see how the HVAC systems have been installed in the lightwell since there was…