Fountain County Courthouse is a historic

courthouse A courthouse or court house is a building that is home to a local court of law and often the regional county government as well, although this is not the case in some larger cities. The term is common in North America. In most other English-spe ...

located at Covington,

Fountain County, Indiana Fountain County lies in the western part of the U.S. state of Indiana on the east side of the Wabash River. The county was officially established in 1826 and was the 53rd in Indiana. The county seat is Covington. According to the 2000 United ...

. It was built in 1937 as a

Public Works Administration The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recove ...

project.

History

Fountain County Courthouse was designed by Louis Johnson, and completed in July 1937. The construction of the building cost $228,822. It is a three-story,

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, flat roofed building faced with

Indiana limestone Indiana limestone — also known as Bedford limestone in the building trade — has long been an economically important building material, particularly for monumental public structures. Indiana limestone is a more common term for Salem Limestone, ...

. It measures 116 feet by 89 feet and incorporates a 32 foot-square wired-glass skylight. ''Note:'' This includes and Accompanying photographs. It was built to replace three previous courthouses that were built in 1827, 1833, and 1859. 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 2007.

Interior

The interior features a collection of

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...

s, totaling 2,500 square foot, painted by

Eugene Savage Eugene Francis Savage (March 29, 1883 – October 19, 1978) was an American painter and sculptor known for his murals in the manner made official under the Works Projects Administration. He also is known for his work on the Bailey Fountain i ...

. The murals reflect the history of Fountain County. In 1983, the murals underwent conservation, using

sealant Sealant is a substance used to block the passage of fluids through openings in materials, a type of mechanical seal. In building construction ''sealant'' is sometimes synonymous with ''caulking'' and also serve the purposes of blocking dust, s ...

which caused the paint to begin to peel from the walls.

References

External links

Public Works Administration in Indiana County courthouses in Indiana Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Indiana Art Deco architecture in Indiana Government buildings completed in 1937 Buildings and structures in Fountain County, Indiana National Register of Historic Places in Fountain County, Indiana 1937 establishments in Indiana {{FountainCountyIN-NRHP-stub