AAC
FEATURE Courthouse
a new and elaborate structure. Officials hired prolific Little Rock architect Frank W. Gibb on May 2, 1904, and he provided a splendid Italian Renaissance-style design that featured a lofty, 114-foot-tall clock tower, as well as a shorter tower punctuated with an arched arcade. Warren builder Edward L. Koonce, a frequent collaborator with Gibb, was hired to construct the building. Te former courthouse was demolished in July 1904 and the new edifice was open for business one year later. It had cost $60,300. Te new building almost suffered the same fate as its 1851 predecessor when a fire started in the flue of a wood stove in the Farm Security Administration office on January 10, 1944. As fire raged on the building’s second floor, courthouse employees and townspeople rushed into the courthouse to move records to safety and local Boy and Girl Scouts helped remove books from the basement library. Te inferno gutted the second floor and destroyed the roof, but the first floor and clock tower remained largely intact (in fact, the clock kept time and continued to strike through much of the fire, finally stopping at 10 minutes before 2 p.m.). County business was moved to the Arcade Building beside the Bank of Ozark as officials weighed their next move. Tey decided to hire Fayetteville architect T. Ewing Shelton to design a reconstruction of the courthouse incorporating the surviving elements of the 1904 building. Shelton abandoned the architectural excesses of the original structure and instead followed the emerging aesthetic of the International style — a school that embraced the term “less is more.” Te reconstructed second floor was faced with buff brick, and the steep hipped roofs from 1904 were replaced with flat surfaces behind parapets. Te clock tower was shortened considerably and its original tall, arched windows became rectangular glass-block openings. Te other tower was reduced in size until it rose just above the roofline. Interior embellishments were limited to marble wainscoting in the hallways. Franklin County voters approved a $37,000 bond sale to pay for the “new” courthouse on Nov. 7, 1944, and the final term of court in the Arcade Building adjourned on Aug. 20, 1945. Te next term convened in the reconstructed Franklin County Courthouse, Northern District, on Sept. 17, 1945, and county business continues there today. Te story of the southern district courthouse is considerably less dramatic than that of the Ozark building.
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Top: An eagle embellishes the Ozark courthouse. Bottom: Dur- ing reconstruction, interior embellishments were limited to mar- ble wainscoting in the hallways.
A second district was approved for Franklin County on March 14, 1885, spurred by the difficulty of crossing the Arkansas River to transact business in Ozark. Charleston was officially designated the southern county seat in 1901, with the Arkansas River serving as the dividing line between the two districts. Court business was conducted in a two-story stone building in Charleston from 1885 until 1922, when
COUNTY LINES, SPRING 2018
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