Clinton County Courthouse is located in

Clinton, Iowa Clinton is a city in and the county seat of Clinton County, Iowa, United States. The population was 24,469 as of 2020. Clinton, along with DeWitt (also located in Clinton County), was named in honor of the sixth governor of New York, DeWitt C ...

, United States. It was built in 1897 and added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

July 2, 1981, as a part of the County Courthouses in Iowa Thematic Resource. It is the fourth courthouse that has been used by the county.

History

Former courthouses

The town of Camanche became the first

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...

around 1840. Hotels and houses were used for county business instead of a dedicated courthouse. In 1841 the legislature of the

Territory of Iowa The Territory of Iowa was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1838, until December 28, 1846, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Iowa. The remain ...

allowed for the relocation of the county seat. A new townsite in the center of the county called Vanderburg was chosen. A frame building was donated for court purposes. The following year the town's name was changed to DeWitt to further honor DeWitt Clinton, for whom the county was named. A planned brick courthouse that would have cost $3,500 was never built due to a lack of support. As the size of the county government increased, court sessions were moved to the attic of the frame building while county offices occupied the rest of the building. The Exchange Hotel was acquired by the county in 1846 for more space. The county constructed a second courthouse in DeWitt measuring in 1854 for $6,000. It was similar in design to the

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...

Scott County Courthouse (1842) in Davenport. The contractors for the project were S.N. Bedford and T.P. & S.M. Butler. Its construction was unpopular as it was ordered by the county judge rather than the people. A jail was built in 1855. The former Exchange Hotel was destroyed in a fire in 1865. By then the population in the eastern part of the county, and in the city of Clinton in particular, had grown substantially. The decision to move the county seat there was made and a new courthouse, which measured , was built in 1869. It was a two-story structure that was built in 23 days, and it was initially rented by the county. By 1878 the building was too small and another building was built on its west side to house some county offices.

Present courthouse

Money to build the present courthouse was allocated in 1892. Poor construction and

quicksand Quicksand is a colloid consisting of fine granular material (such as sand, silt or clay) and water. It forms in saturated loose sand when the sand is suddenly agitated. When water in the sand cannot escape, it creates a liquefied soil that los ...

forced the foundation to be re-built. A new architect and contractor were hired and elections were held to approve additional funds, which all delayed construction. The building was finally completed in 1897 at a cost of $168,000. The design by M.S. Mansfield in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, beat eight other entrants in a design competition for the new courthouse. It is constructed of red

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

and

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

with

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

covering the large central tower. The building also features a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

with dormers,

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). ...

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

ends, and corner towers that are capped with a

conical roof A conical roof or cone roof is a cone-shaped roof that is circular at its base and terminates in a point. Distribution Conical roofs are frequently found on top of towers in medieval town fortifications and castles, where they may either si ...

. Its historical significance is derived from its association with county government, and the political power and prestige of Clinton as the county seat. with In August 2017, engineers found that one of the beams in the basement that supports the first floor failed due to regular wear. The courthouse was closed for two weeks so repairs could be made. Offices and court functions were temporarily moved to the county administration building.

References

{{NRHP in Clinton County, Iowa Government buildings completed in 1897 Romanesque Revival architecture in Iowa Buildings and structures in Clinton, Iowa County courthouses in Iowa Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa Clock towers in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Clinton County, Iowa