The Whiteside County Courthouse is a government building in Morrison, 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 Whiteside County,

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. Completed in 1987 to replace a 19th-century predecessor, it is the fourth courthouse, in the third community, to serve Whiteside County officials since the county's formation.

History

Growing settlement in northwestern Illinois prompted the legislature to establish

Peoria County Peoria County is located in the U.S. state of Illinois. The 2020 United States Census listed its population at 181,830. Its county seat is Peoria. Peoria County is part of the Peoria, IL Metropolitan Statistical Area. History Peoria County was ...

in 1825 and to separate its northwestern portions as

Jo Daviess County Jo Daviess County () is the northwesternmost county in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it had a population of 22,678. Its county seat is Galena. Jo Daviess County is part of the Tri-State Area and is located near D ...

two years later. Out of this county's southern portions was formed Whiteside County in 1836, although it temporarily remained attached to the parent county, and full organization required a number of years to complete;Davis, William W. ''History of Whiteside County, Illinois : from its earliest settlement to 1908''. Vol. 1.

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: Pioneer, 1908. not until 1852 could the county be divided into

townships A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

, for example. By this time, the area was well settled, the first pioneers having arrived more than twenty years prior, and as early as 1858, there was an old-settlers' association in operation. County voters met to choose a

in 1839, selecting

Lyndon Lyndon may refer to: Places * Lyndon, Alberta, Canada * Lyndon, Rutland, East Midlands, England * Lyndon, Solihull, West Midlands, England United States * Lyndon, Illinois * Lyndon, Kansas * Lyndon, Kentucky * Lyndon, New York * Lyndon, Ohio * ...

, but Sterling residents were dissatisfied with this choice; the county commissioners allowed a second vote at which the upstart supplanted Lyndon, and the seat was moved in 1841. Nevertheless, the contest continued: county residents pressured legislators in Springfield, who over the next four years enacted three separate laws seeking to resolve the question: a commission was appointed to ascertain the best location in 1843, a Lyndon lawsuit seeking to retrieve the seat status was quashed by an 1846 law naming Sterling the seat, and an 1849 act ordered another election whose decision was to be final. Sterling being the victor of this election, Lyndon finally ceased to contend, but in 1857, the residents of Morrison urged the passage of another law to permit yet another election, and their victory in this vote caused the seat to move in 1858.

Previous courthouses

Whiteside County's first courthouse was a simple building constructed on the Lyndon public square, starting in 1840, but as the county seat was removed to Sterling one year later, it saw only a short period of use for its original purpose. Sterling then built a two-

story Story or stories may refer to: Common uses * Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events) ** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting * Story (American English), or storey (British ...

square brick courthouse with a second-floor courtroom, within which several local churches worshipped before completing their buildings. It stood until the late 1870s, unoccupied after the county offices moved to Morrison, but after its demolition the site was redeveloped into a residential neighborhood. The third courthouse was completed in 1865 at a cost of over $14,000, it was a significantly larger building, , with an unusual circular courtroom, it was a two-story brick structure with county offices on the first floor and courtrooms on the second. The style was

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

, due partly to features such as a domed

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 ...

and doubled

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or ' ...

under the eaves of the shallow roof.Weiser, Dennis. ''Illinois courthouses: an illustrated history''.

Virginia Beach Virginia Beach is an independent city located on the southeastern coast of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The population was 459,470 at the 2020 census. Although mostly suburban in character, it is the most populous city ...

: Donning, 2009, 152.

Current courthouse

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

'', 2000-05-07. Accessed 2017-08-02. the current courthouse was constructed between 1982 and 1987. A firmly

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

building, the courthouse features a wall of brick with a continuous course of windows at the center of each story. A large

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or ...

, the height of the entire floor, projects from the top story atop a column-supported overhang that covers an outdoors walking area on one side of the building.

References

External links

Whiteside County website
{{coord, 41, 48, 37, N, 89, 57, 50, W, display=title Government buildings completed in 1987 Brick buildings and structures Buildings and structures in Whiteside County, Illinois County courthouses in Illinois Modernist architecture in Illinois