Courthouse Square Historic District is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

located at

West Plains West Plains is a city in, and the county seat of Howell County, Missouri, United States. The population was 12,184 at the 2020 census. History The history of West Plains can be traced back to 1832, when settler Josiah Howell (after whom Howell ...

Howell County, Missouri Howell County is in southern Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 39,750. The largest city and county seat is West Plains. The county was officially organized on March 2, 1851, and is named after Josiah Howell, a pioneer settler i ...

. The district encompasses 46 contributing buildings in the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

of West Plains. It developed between about 1881 and 1950 and includes representative examples of

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

, Queen Anne,

Romanesque Revival Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...

Late Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

, and

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style architecture. Located in the district are the separately listed Elledge Arcade Buildings, W. J. and Ed Smith Building, and West Plains Bank Building. Other notable buildings include the IOOF Building #2 (c. 1923), First Presbyterian Church (c. 1887, 1910, 1978), Howell County Courthouse (1937), Aid Hardware Building (1914-1915), W. N. Evans Building (c. 1892), J. R. Foster Building (c. 1929), Foster-Renfrew Building (c. 1919), Alsup, Risley & Skillman Block (c. 1887), Catron Opera House / Johnson Opera House (1893), IOOF Building / J. R. Galloway Building (1896), Evans Theatre (c. 1899, 1913), W. J. Zorn Building, #1/Howell County Gazette Building (1911-1912), West Plains Fire Department/City Hall (1917), and Avenue Theatre (1950). (includes 14 photographs from 2002) an
Site map
/ref> It was listed on 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 v ...

in 2003.

References

External links

* Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Missouri Queen Anne architecture in Missouri Italianate architecture in Missouri Romanesque Revival architecture in Missouri Gothic Revival architecture in Missouri Art Deco architecture in Missouri Buildings and structures in Howell County, Missouri National Register of Historic Places in Howell County, Missouri {{HowellCountyMO-NRHP-stub