The Sauk County Courthouse, located at 515 Oak Street in

Baraboo Baraboo is a city in the Midwest and the county seat of Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The largest city in the county, Baraboo is the principal city of the Baraboo Micropolitan Statistical Area. Its 2020 population was 12,556. It is situ ...

, is the county courthouse serving

Sauk County Sauk County is a county in Wisconsin. It is named after a large village of the Sauk people. As of the 2020 census, the population was 65,763. Its county seat and largest city is Baraboo. The county was created in 1840 from Wisconsin Territory a ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. Built in 1906, the courthouse is Sauk County's fourth and its third in Baraboo. Wisconsin architecture firm Ferry & Clas designed the Neoclassical building. The courthouse is 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 ...

History

Sauk County's first courthouse was built in

Prairie du Sac Prairie du Sac is a village in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 4,420 at the 2020 census. The village is surrounded by the Town of Prairie du Sac, the Wisconsin River, and the village of Sauk City; together, Prairie du Sa ...

in 1844; however, the county seat moved to Baraboo two years later, and after a challenge from Reedsburg an 1852 referendum kept it there. The first courthouse in Baraboo was completed in 1848, on the present-day courthouse square; the two-story building also hosted classes, dances, and church services in its courtroom. The 1848 courthouse burned down in the 1850s, and the county constructed a new brick courthouse at the same site. The new courthouse ultimately burned down as well, in December 1904; however, the county had voted to replace it a month before the fire. Its replacement, the current courthouse, was completed in 1906.Accompanied by photos
The courthouse's tower was renovated in 1915 to add bells. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 9, 1982. The county expanded it in 1989 and renovated it in 1996.

Architecture

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

-based architecture firm Ferry & Clas designed the Neoclassical courthouse. The two-story building is built of Indiana limestone. The front entrance is flanked by two-story Ionic

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; the door is topped by a

pediment 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 pedimen ...

, and long windows on the second floor complete the entrance. An

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 projecting

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

, separated by dentillation, run along the building's roof line. The courthouse's

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

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, ...

is topped by a clock tower, which was originally a

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, from ...

before its renovation. While much of the interior has been renovated, the courthouse's marble staircase hall and

barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

ed corridors are original; the former features decorative

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

s and egg-and-dart moldings.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places National Register of Historic Places in Sauk County, Wisconsin Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin Neoclassical architecture in Wisconsin Government buildings completed in 1915 Baraboo, Wisconsin County courthouses in Wisconsin