The Delaware County Courthouse is located at 117 N Union St, Delaware, OH 43015 in

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. The courthouse was placed on the

National Register 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 ...

History

Delaware County was established in 1807 by an act of the

Ohio General Assembly The Ohio General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Ohio. It consists of the 99-member Ohio House of Representatives and the 33-member Ohio Senate. Both houses of the General Assembly meet at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus ...

. The county seat was placed at

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...

until 1808 when Delaware was founded and successfully petitioned to be the county seat. The courts met in various locations until a courthouse was built in 1815. The building cost the county $8,000 and was a simple one story building. The building contained fire walls to protect the structure from burning, but a fire struck the building towards the end of the 1800s forcing the county to rent a different location. A new courthouse was chosen and planned in 1868 in the

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 ...

style and designed by Robert N. Jones. The courthouse cost the county $80,000 to build. In 1996, the county renovated the courthouse for six months at a cost of $500,000. The county is faced with a growing population and a new Justice Center is currently under construction. That building is scheduled for completion and occupancy in August or September 2017. The General and Domestic Relations Divisions of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas will move to the new building as will the Public Defender's Office, the Delaware County Clerk of Courts, the adult probation office, and a meeting room for the grand jury. The county has announced plans to renovate the historic courthouse, and a facilities use study is underway to determine which county offices will occupy the building once renovated.

Exterior

The square two-story structure is built of red bricks. The main facade contains a central projection capped with a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

. The door sits in a recessed alcove and is contained within an arch faced with stone blocks. A window above contains two thin arched windows within an arched recess. To either side of the projection are two arched windows, the lower windows being shorter with squat arches and the top floor containing longer fully arched windows. Each window is surrounded by decorative stone casings. The

hipped 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, ...

rises to a central square drum supporting a dome topped by a statue of

Justice Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...

. A wrought iron railing runs around the drum and arched windows light the floors below.

History

Exterior

References

Further reading