Architect: Littleberry Weaver
Initial construction 1843.
Improvements were made in 1858 by J. J. Kriss, architect, and I. G. Livers, contractor, for $1,000. The interior of the building was completely overlauled, and made both comfortable and convenient.
During the second year of the Civil War this building was taken by the soldiers and oocupied as a military headquarters, a prison house, hospital, cookhouse and a means of defense against the attacks of the enemy. At the close of the war the interior of the building presented a mutilated appearance. Pews and benches, flooring and the other necessary appendages had been sacrificed to the flames or whittled into ingenious trinkets. Its ruthless inmates had laid destroying hands upon evidences of value, torn from its walls the beauties of architecture, and knifed into shapless confusion the bench from which justice had been delivered. Judge Mutchen, called a meeting in the fall of 1865 to devise ways and means for repairing and re-organizing the Court Fouse, which had been rendered worthless from causes growing out of the late war. The sum of $5,000 was ordered appropriated to the remodeling and repairing of the Court House. A committee was appointed to borrow the said sum on the credit of the county.
At the May term, 1865, plans and specifications of the architects, Mursinna and Boyd, wore received and adopted. The internal arrangements of the building was completoly revolutionized by the architects. In this change, a large vault was built for the purpose of preserving the records of the county. The work was finished in 1866.
In 1874, a two-story wing was added, the lower floor set apart for the office of the Cirouit Court Clark, and office records. Another vault was added at the same time.
In 1881 another addition of a wing was completed to provide space for the county clerk’s office and the Grand Jury room.
Among those who practiced in this old Court House, and later were governors of Kentucky: Governor Lazarus W. Powell. Governor John Young Brown, Governor Augustus Owsley Stanley, and Lieutenant-Governor Archibald Dixon.
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