Take yourself back 130 years this morning to the final day of November 1891 and head up to Chariton's square. The streets were dirt (or mud, depending) and the sidewalks, wood. At the southeast corner, that two-story building that now hides behind a blue false front and houses a furniture store was brand new, built the previous year by Victoria J. Dewey and known as the Dewey Block with two storefronts at street level and 10 office rooms above.
Over at the Courthouse, teams, wagons and men were evacuating the old 1858 building, hauling records and furniture out, loading everything up and transporting (or in some cases just carrying) the contents to the new offices in the Dewey Block, rented by the Board of Supervisors for $760 a year as emergency headquarters for both the courts and county government.
The image here is of that courthouse, taken some years earlier when it was nearly new. No one in Lucas County knew of the photograph --- housed in the Kearney County Historical Society's museum in Minden, Nebraska --- until 2014 when Jack Hultquist did the detective work needed to identify it and shared scans.
The St. John House hotel is visible to the left of the courthouse, on the south side of what now is Court Avenue, and the 1857 Hatcher House, to the right. Among the old courthouse's dubious claims to fame was the fact that horse thief Hiram Wilson, who fatally shot Sheriff Gaylord Lyman just off the southeast corner of the square back in July of 1870, was lynched by a mob that tossed him out a second-floor window with a rope around his neck the night the sheriff died.
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Although it certainly was an attractive building, the old courthouse had been something of a disaster from start to finish. Building it bankrupted the county after actual cost proved to be about double the original bid, coming in somewhere in the neighborhood of $23,000. And then it had no foundation --- those brick walls were based on nothing more than hewn logs planted on top of pilings driven into southern Iowa's shifting soil. Settling and cracking started almost immediately.
Everyone knew by the fall of 1891, 33 years later, that the building was dangerous, but push came to shove when circuit court judges refused to use the courtroom and moved operations to the city-owned building just off the southwest corner of the square that housed Old Betsy, the hook and ladder wagon and other firefighting equipment on the first floor and City Hall above. City Hall and the fire station still are at that location although obviously in a far newer building.
The Chariton Patriot reported in its edition of Nov. 11, 1891, that "Owing to the unsafe conditions of the court house, Judge Traverse refused to hold court in the court room, and adjourned to the rooms over the engine house."
The next day, The Herald added a few details and a little advice: "The Court House walls are becoming so much impaired by the settling of the foundation that the building is thought to be entirely unsafe for longer occupancy. On account of the dangerous condition of the building, Judge Burton has moved his court to the city hall. The county officers are on nettles, so as to speak, and are anxious to get out of what they regard as a veritable man-trap. The Board of Supervisors should lose no time in securing the opinion of competent architects and vacating the building if the condition is such as to warrant the fears entertained."
As it turned out, the county supervisors were acting even as those reports were being published and also on Nov. 11 passed the following resolution, as reported in The Democrat of Nov. 19: "Resolved, that in the opinion of the Board of supervisors, the Court House of Lucas county is in an entirely unsafe condition and cannot be repaired at a reasonable expense, and it is hereby ordered that the several county offices be vacated and Supervisor Wheeler is hereby appointed a special committee to procure suitable rooms for the several county officers."
The Herald reported, also on Nov. 19, as follows: "As will be seen from the proceedings of the Board of Supervisors in another column, the old court house has been condemned and the offices are to be removed into other and safer quarters. We understand that the Board has rented for two years with the privilege of four the entire upper story, except one room, of the Dewey block on the south side of the square, thereby securing nine convenient and comfortable office rooms at an annual rental of $760. The price seems high and it appears to some that the action of the Board in this matter has been somewhat hasty, but perhaps it is the best that could be done."
On Dec. 2, The Patriot reported that the old court house had been vacated on Dec. 1 "and so all public records and offices will hereafter be in the upper rooms of the Dewey block on the south side of the square. If we had the time what a history could be given of the old structure that will now stand in its loneliness until replaced by a more substantial one befitting the wealth of such a county as Lucas."
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Early in the new year, the county supervisors ordered demolition of the old courthouse by a resolution dated Tuesday, January 12, 1892: "It is hereby ordered that the court house of Lucas county be taken down and all material therein of value be carefully cared for and D.A. Enslow is hereby appointed foreman to oversee the work and caring for the material therein." Mr. Enslow was to be paid $2 a day for his trouble.
Demolition began during early February and had been more or less completed by the end of the month. "Work on tearing down the Court House has commenced and before many weeks the old eyesore will be no more," The Democrat reported on Feb. 11. "The tearing down of the court house calls forth a crowd of loafers on the corners who, while trying to appear interested in the strides of progress, never fail to stare the ladies out of countenance and blockade the walks," The Herald of Feb. 18 noted.
Some of the bricks and other masonry rubble from the old building were simply dumped into the streets surrounding the courthouse in an attempt to stabilize what generally became a sea of bottomless mud when the spring thaw arrived. Other rubble was left in place, resulting in something of an eyesore. The Democrat expressed its editorial outrage at the way the courthouse park now looked in its edition of March 31:
"The condition of the Court House park is such as to make the neat, interested citizens hide their faces or look the other way when once they have viewed it . The old treasury vault is to be left standing, which in itself is enough to make an eyesore. The intention of the county supervisors, so we are well informed, is to leave the old bricks and refuse lay in the place they are now. They assign as their reason for doing so that they want to use it to fill in around the new Court House. How ridiculous! Was ever a large building constructed but that there was always more than enough material left after building to do that. We have poor prospects of having a Court House built very soon, and to spoil our park, the only place we have for large congregations of people, is too bad. Then again it leaves a bad impression with strangers who visit our place. They nearly always take it for granted and it is the rule that neatness in public affairs is a criterion as to the neatness of the individuals. We hear numerous complaints every day concerning the state of affairs. the citizens should have their desires respected by the Board of Supervisors, and we hope that it may be removed and that we will again have our park neat and beautiful as it should be."
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Plans for a new courthouse actually moved with relative speed after that. During June of 1892, the county supervisors scheduled a county-wide election for August to vote on the issue of $60,000 in bonds to fund a new courthouse. Voters approved the measure 1,286 to 873 and bids were let during October. Work on the new building continued throughout 1893, county offices were moved into the new structure during the spring of 1894 and the building itself was dedicated during May.
The "new" courthouse continues to serve the people of Lucas County and remains (with constant attention) in a good state of repair.
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