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Waukesha County Historical Society and Museum (Old Waukesha County Courthouse)

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1885–1894, Rau and Kirsch; 1938–1939 west wing. 101 W. Main St.
  • (Photograph by Paul J. Jakubovich, courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society)

H. H. Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh inspired many late-nineteenth-century imitators, including this courthouse, Waukesha County’s second. Its rock-faced walls, gabled entrance pavilions, heavy-arched portals springing from squat stone columns, stocky towers guarding the corners (though round with conical roofs), and a three-stage tower soaring above a hipped roof reveal Richardson’s influence. Rectangular windows on the first story and round-arched ones on the second lighten the ponderous mass. Stone transom bars and sills band both levels, festooned spandrels are set beneath the second-story sills, and a dentil course is at the eaves. A west wing, added in 1938–1939, links the courthouse to the stone jail of 1885, a simple box with rectangular windows, a hipped roof, and gabled wall dormers.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Marsha Weisiger et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

The Rotunda (U.S. Post Office)
First United Methodist Church
Downtown Historic District
Silurian Mineral Springhouse
First Baptist Church

Citation

Marsha Weisiger et al., "Waukesha County Historical Society and Museum (Old Waukesha County Courthouse)", [Waukesha, Wisconsin], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WI-01-WK6.

Print Source

Buildings of Wisconsin

Buildings of Wisconsin, Marsha Weisiger and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017, 197-197.

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