Meigs County Courthouse (Ohio)

In 1819, Meigs County was separated from Gallia County, and a courthouse and jail were soon built in the community of Chester.[2]^: 5 This building, known as the Old Meigs County Courthouse, remains in existence; it is the oldest standing courthouse in Ohio.[3] Within twenty years, Chester was in decline and the new riverside village of Pomeroy was growing in prominence; the resulting change of county seat status from Chester to Pomeroy, accomplished in 1841,[4] was later deemed the "one great event" in the county's history.[2]^: 7 In 1845, the Meigs County Commissioners arranged for the construction of a new courthouse in Pomeroy, contracting with S.S. Bergin to be the architect;[5] construction was overseen by County Commissioner John C. Hysell,[2]^: 76 and the building was completed in 1848.[3] Fifteen years later, the courthouse was used as a temporary jail for more than two hundred of Morgan's Raiders who had been captured in the Battle of Buffington Island in Meigs County.[6]

Meigs County paid $5,215 to build the courthouse — $15 to buy the blueprints for the Scioto County Courthouse, and $5,200 for construction of a building virtually identical to the one in Scioto County.[6] The three-story courthouse is a Greek Revival structure featuring elements such as a pedimented entrance with Doric columns, decorative pilasters, a bracketed cornice, and a circular central tower with a dome and windowed cupola.[5] It is primarily built of brick, although carven stone trim frames the arched windows.[3] Because downtown Pomeroy lies on a narrow strip of land between the Ohio River and steep cliffs,[4] the courthouse was built against the cliffs. By 1877, insufficient interior space forced the construction of wings along the hillside to house additional offices,[5] along with spiral staircases, the columns, and the Italianate-influenced cornice on the tower. In order to permit fuller use of the existing portions of the building, workers excavated the street to the same level as the basement.[6] Existing hilly land around the wings permitted the construction of at-grade entrances to all three floors of the courthouse.[5]

Due in part to Pomeroy's economic stagnation in the twentieth century, new construction in the downtown has been virtually nonexistent for several decades; consequently, the business district is almost identical to its nineteenth-century appearance. One of the more recent construction projects around the courthouse involved the placement of a Civil War memorial statue on the courthouse lawn in 1870; it bears more than five hundred names of the county's war dead.[5] Most of the other downtown buildings are Italianate structures from the second half of the century, making the courthouse's earlier architecture stand out from its surroundings;[4] observers across the Ohio River in Mason, West Virginia can easily see the courthouse as it sits at the northern end of Court Street.[5] Because of its unusually good degree of preservation, much of the downtown was declared a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.[1] Known as the Pomeroy Historic District, this portion of the downtown centers on the courthouse.[4]

The Meigs County Courthouse remains in use by governmental bodies, such as the common pleas court and lesser courts. It is one of the state's oldest courthouses still used as a courthouse.[3]

• Meigs County Municipal Court