The Menominee County Courthouse is a government building located on Tenth Avenue between Eighth and Tenth Streets in

Menominee, Michigan Menominee ( ) is a city in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 8,599 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Menominee County. Menominee is the fourth-largest city in the Upper Peninsula, behind Marquett ...

. 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 ...

in 1975 and designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1974.

History

Menominee County was created in 1863, and included at the time the land that now covers Menominee,

Iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

, and Dickinson Counties. The county seat was established in Menominee, and a clerk's office and jail were quickly built. In 1874, county residents decided to build a courthouse, and bonds were sold to fund the construction. A new plot of land in Menominee was found and purchased for the courthouse, and

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

architect Gurdon P. Randall was hired to design the new building. Contractors Cummings and Hagan were hired to build the courthouse, and construction began in 1874. The building was completed in 1875 at a cost of $29,680. The building originally housed a jail on the first floor, county offices on the second floor, and the courtroom on the third floor. Additions to the building were completed in 1909 and 1938. The original connected jail and sheriff's residence were demolished later in the 20th century, but the courthouse itself was renovated in the early 1980s.

Description

The Menominee County Courthouse is a three-story

Classical Revival Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing style ...

building constructed of red brick, sitting on a rock-faced ashlar basement. The exterior walls are load-bearing, while the interior walls, floors, and roof are constructed of wood. Additional reinforcing of concrete and steel has been added during renovations. The building is ornamented with stone

quoins Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th century encyclopedia, t ...

and beltcourses separating the two upper stories. A

hip 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, ...

with a belfry and wooden

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, fro ...

tops the courthouse. The building has four symmetrical facades, each with slightly projected

pavilions In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

topped by triangular

pediments 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 pedime ...

. The entrance facade has a projecting foyer which was added to the building at a later date. The original structure measured by , giving about 9000 square feet of space. with a jail and sheriff's residence connected to the main building. The 1909 construction added a by entryway, and a more substantial addition was added to the building in 1938. With additions, the current courthouse houses 20,000 square feet of space.

References

External links

Menominee County
official page: courthouse history {{National Register of Historic Places Government buildings completed in 1875 Buildings and structures in Menominee County, Michigan Michigan State Historic Sites County courthouses in Michigan Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Neoclassical architecture in Michigan National Register of Historic Places in Menominee County, Michigan