The Lee County Courthouse features two

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 ...

buildings constructed at 15 East Chestnut Street in

Marianna, Arkansas Marianna is a town in and the county seat of Lee County, Arkansas, Lee County, Arkansas, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census it had a population of 4,115, but by 2018 the population had dropped to an estimated 3,477. Lo ...

, United States, 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 Lee County. The original courthouse was a wooden at the corner of Poplar and Mississippi streets built in 1873 when Marianna became the county seat of Lee County. A larger courthouse was built in 1890 and it was expanded with another new courthouse building added next to it in 1936. The courthouse compound 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 1995. The newer courthouse was designed by

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

based architect George Mahan Jr. with Everett Woods and built in the

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archi ...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24477470 page 181 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 ...

styles.

History

Marianna moved south onto the banks of the

L'Anguille River L'Anguille River (pronounced "lan-GWEEL" "LANG-gill" or locally as "LANE-GEE") is a tributary of the St. Francis River, approximately 110 mi (175 km) long, in northeastern Arkansas in the United States. Via the St. Francis River, it is ...

in 1869 and is centrally located within Lee County. A red brick courthouse was built in 1890 while the city thrived on the cotton industry. This building became too small and was expanded with the help of

Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works 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 Reco ...

funds. Rather than expanding, the county chose to construct a new two-story addition of new materials in a new style in the 1930s, which dwarfed the former structure.

Architecture

The Lee County Courthouse is a late example of the Classical Revival style, a style which had largely died out by 1920. The

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

entablature An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...

, and

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s typical of a classical revival building are present, if not subdued by the art deco influence.

References

External links

{{National Register of Historic Places Colonial Revival architecture in Arkansas Government buildings completed in 1890 Buildings and structures in Lee County, Arkansas County courthouses in Arkansas Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas National Register of Historic Places in Lee County, Arkansas Historic district contributing properties in Arkansas

History

Architecture

See also

References

External links