The Marion County Courthouse in

Knoxville, Iowa Knoxville is a city in Marion County, Iowa, United States. The population was 7,595 at the time of the 2020 census, an increase from 7,313 in the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Marion County. Knoxville is home of the National Sprint Ca ...

, United States was built in 1896. 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 1981 as a part of the County Courthouses in Iowa Thematic Resource. The courthouse is the third building the county has used for court functions and county administration.

History

Marion County was organized in 1845 and its first courthouse was built a year later. It was a frame building that was constructed for $700. It also served the community as a school and a church. After 12 years the county sold the building for $928, and the second courthouse was built in 1857 for around $20,000. It was a two-story brick structure that measured . It stood in the center of the public square and housed county offices on the first floor and a courtroom on the second floor. The second courthouse was used for 40 years until it was declared unsafe to use. The present courthouse was designed by

Mifflin E. Bell Mifflin Emlen Bell (October 20, 1847 – May 31, 1904), often known as M.E. Bell, was an American architect who served from 1883 to 1886 as Supervising Architect of the US Treasury Department. Bell delegated design responsibilities to staff mem ...

in the

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 ...

style. It was completed in 1896 at a cost of $80,000. The courthouse's significance is derived from its association with county government, and the political power and prestige of Knoxville as the county seat. with A monument that was "Erected to the memory of the soldiers, sailors and marines of all wars" was built on the northwest corner of the courthouse square and dedicated on November 11, 1920. The

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

shaft is capped with

Union soldier During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...

from the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. It is located where 40 soldiers enlisted under a tree on February 4, 1863. There is also a case in the courthouse that contains artifacts from the Civil War. There is another monument on the square to Knoxville resident

Dixie Cornell Gebhardt Dixie Cornell Gebhardt (November 18, 1866 – October 16, 1955) was a state regent and secretary of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Iowa during World War I, and designed the flag for the state of Iowa. At the beginning of the w ...

, who designed the flag of the state of Iowa.

Architecture

The three-story structure is a simplified version of the

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanesque ...

style. The exterior is composed of

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

. The central pavilion features corner turrets and patterned stonework. The main entrance is recessed in the pavilion behind triple bynian arches that are supported by granite columns. The building overall is capped with a gable roof, but the two end pavilions are capped with a

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, ...

. Stone

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...

s line the edges of the roofline. The structure is surmounted by a large central tower with an open

bell chamber The belfry is a structure enclosing bells for ringing as part of a building, usually as part of a bell tower or steeple. It can also refer to the entire tower or building, particularly in continental Europe for such a tower attached to a city h ...

, a four-faced clock, and an octagon shaped

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

. One of the corner

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

s on the tower doubles as a chimney stack.

References

External links

{{County courthouses in Iowa Government buildings completed in 1896 Knoxville, Iowa Romanesque Revival architecture in Iowa Buildings and structures in Marion County, Iowa Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa County courthouses in Iowa Clock towers in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Marion County, Iowa