The Van Wert County Courthouse is a historic governmental building in downtown Van Wert,

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. Located at 121 E. Main Street, the courthouse is a

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structure built in 1876. It is Van Wert County's third courthouse: when the county was established, the village of Willshire was designated 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 ...

; Van Wert was made the seat in 1838, and a courthouse-and-

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complex was built in that community in the following year. Designed by T.J. Tolan, an architect from

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, the courthouse is a square structure with towers on all four corners. Its architecture combines copious amounts of brick and stone: the

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and the walls of the first floor are stone, along with the

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s, columns, and

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on the upper parts of the exterior, while the walls of the remaining

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and of the tower are built of brick.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 2.

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: Somerset, 1999, 1366. Tolan employed multiple groundbreaking construction techniques throughout the structure, such as pressed

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...

; his success in using these innovations earned recognition for both him and the courthouse in a national

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.Van Wert County Courthouse

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, n.d. Accessed 2010-08-20. Rising above the front of the courthouse is a

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another buildi ...

with a statue of

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placed in a niche. Made of

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

, the statue is tall; before its installation at the courthouse, it was awarded first place in a

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

sculpture competition. Today, county officials continue to use the courthouse for everyday operations. Among the offices in the courthouse are those of the county

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, the county

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, the county

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or, and the Van Wert County Common Pleas Court. Some other county agencies maintain offices in other locations, such as the county

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and the

county commission A county commission (or a board of county commissioners) is a group of elected officials (county commissioners) collectively charged with administering the county government in some states of the United States; such commissions usually comprise ...

ers. In 1974, the Van Wert County Courthouse 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 ...

, becoming the first building in the county to receive this distinction. It qualified for inclusion because of its well-preserved historic architecture, which was seen as significant statewide.,

Ohio Historical Society Ohio History Connection, formerly The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and Ohio Historical Society, is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1885. Headquartered at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio History Connect ...

, 2007. Accessed 2010-08-20.

References

External links

Van Wert County
{{NRHP in Van Wert County, Ohio Government buildings completed in 1876 County courthouses in Ohio Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Van Wert County, Ohio Second Empire architecture in Ohio Van Wert, Ohio Buildings and structures in Van Wert County, Ohio Clock towers in Ohio