Jefferson County Courthouse in Mount Vernon

The Jefferson County Courthouse is a government building in

Mount Vernon Mount Vernon is an American landmark and former plantation of Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States George Washington and his wife, Martha. The estate is on ...

, the

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 ...

of Jefferson County,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Built in 1939 by the federal

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

, it is the fifth

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 ...

to serve Jefferson County.

Early history

The first settlers in the county were Andrew Moore and his family, who arrived in 1810, but he and one of his sons were killed by Indians,Perrin, William Henry, ed. ''History of Jefferson County, Illinois''.

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

: Globe, 1883. and his wife and her remaining children left and settled in

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. The first surveyors came in 1815, and some of them returned in the following year to settle in the area. The first

General Assembly A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company. Specific examples of general assembly include: Churches * General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of presby ...

after statehood enacted a law in 1819 creating Jefferson County and appointed a team of commissioners to locate the county seat, provided that the landowner donate land for the foundation of the town. This law specified a location at which the commissioners were to meet, and within a week the commissioners chose the meeting location for the new county seat. A few individuals wished for a different location, but no significant dissension ever arose,Wall, John A. ''Wall's history of Jefferson County Illinois''.

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: B.F. Bowen, 1909. and the commissioners chose "Mount Vernon" as the name of the new town, due to their reverence for George Washington.

Previous courthouses

At their first meeting, the county commissioners' court ordered the construction of a courthouse, to be a simple log building with a single door and window, and to be completed by September 1819. Although the contract was fulfilled, the building was quickly subjected to significant modifications: winter proved that the building could not be kept warm, and by March 1820, the county's costs had mushroomed from the original $85 to $160 merely for the difficulties of chinking the cracks between the logs, building a fireplace and chimney, and constructing a platform inside the courthouse. As primitive state law required the construction of a stray pound and a jail in a new county seat,Weiser, Dennis. ''Illinois courthouses: an illustrated history''.

Virginia Beach Virginia Beach is an independent city located on the southeastern coast of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The population was 459,470 at the 2020 census. Although mostly suburban in character, it is the most populous city ...

: Donning, 2009. both structures were ordered in 1820 to be built nearby. Although this courthouse was not considered particularly safe, the county court had no desire to erect a replacement. The situation changed completely on a calm, quiet night in 1839; the first people stirring in the morning discovered that the courthouse had partially collapsed, leaving a hole on one side large enough to drive a wagon through, and the remains were pulled down with ropes. Their hands having been forced, the commissioners began making arrangements for a replacement, a square brick building on each side with a

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atop the roof. Set on the public square, this building opened for use in 1840, but unfortunately for the builder, tax revenues had been poor, and he had to wait until 1841 to receive the $5,500 due him by the construction contract. This building remained until 16 March 1869, when it was consumed by an overnight fire that popular reputation ascribed to a drunken sheriff. Two years passed before its replacement was completed, and this building stood only seventeen years before a tornado destroyed it, together with most of the rest of Mount Vernon, on 19 February 1888. A replacement was finished in 1889.

Current courthouse

The fifth and current courthouse is one of six

county courthouses in Illinois. A concrete

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 ...

structure three stories high, it features a wide staircase on the facade that provides access to the three- bay entrance. Its basement is set only partially below ground, with enough above-ground height that windows are placed throughout the basement walls. The overall plan is irregular, with the second floor being set back from the first and the third from the second. It was finished in 1939.

References

External links

Jefferson County website
{{coord, 38, 19, 2, N, 88, 54, 11, W, display=title Government buildings completed in 1939 Art Deco architecture in Illinois Buildings and structures in Jefferson County, Illinois Concrete buildings and structures County courthouses in Illinois Works Progress Administration in Illinois 1939 establishments in Illinois